


LtBRARY OF CONGRESi. 



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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 

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MONTALEMBERT 



H JSioorapbtcal Sketcb. 



JOS. WALTER WILSTACH. 



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New York: 

THE CATHOLIC PUBLICATION SOCIETY CO., 

9 BARCLAY STREET. 

1885. 



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. M '7 Yy^ 




Copyright, 1885, Joseph Walter Wii.stach. 



CONTENTS 



PART FIRST. 

1810-1835. 

PAGE 

Youth— Travels — First Literary Labors, ... 9 



PART SECOND. 

1835-1857. 

Public Career, . . .37 



PART THIRD. 



1857-1870. 



Retirement — "The Monks of the West" — Last Lite- 
rary Labors, 79 



TABLE 



hnportant Contemporary Events in France. 



1810 — The Empire of Napoleon, which had reached its acme, was now begin- 
ning to lose prestige owing to the successful efforts of the English 
in the Spanish Peninsula. 

ISl^ — War declared by Napoleon against Russia, followed by the disasters of 
the Moscow campaign, 

181h — March 31, Paris capitulated. 

Napoleon abdicated in favor of his son and retired to Elba. 
May 3, Louis XVIII. entered Paris and was declared king. This marks 
the beginning of the " Restoration." 

1815 — March i. Napoleon left Elba secretly and reached France, and collected 
recruits for a last effort. 
June 18, the battle of Waterloo, in which Napoleon's power was for 
ever overthrown. He was sent to the island of St. Helena. 

iS^/4.— Louis XVIII. died. He was succeeded by his brother, the Due d'ArtoIs, 
under the title of Charles X. 

1830 — The Restoration overthrown by a, revolution in July, and Louis Phi- 
lippe, Duke of Orleans, was declared king, and established what is 
known as the "July Government." 

18h8 — The Louis Philippe regime was overthrown by a revolution, and the 
king abdicated February 24, and the Republic of '48 was declared 
under a Provisional Government. 
June, insurrection in Paris, instigated by Red Republicans ; lasted 

seventy hours. 
Cavaignac appointed dictator. 

Louis Napoleon elected president, December 10, for four j^ears, but not 
to be re-eligible. 

1851 — December 2, Napoleon effected a cotip-cVetaty gave France another con- 
stitution, and was re-elected thereunder. 

1852 — December 2, Napoleon elected emperor and assumed the title of " Na- 
poleon III., hereditary Emperor of the French, by the grace of God 
and the will of the people." 

1810 — July 19, war declared by Napoleon against Prussia. 



part first. 



" Je defie quon trouve tme parole sortie de ma plwne, 
ou tombee de mes levres, qui ne soit pas desti?iee a servir 
la liber te. La liberie ! Ah ! je peux le dire sans phrase, 
elle a etS I'idole de mon dine ; si fai quelqiie reproche a 
■me fair e^ c'est de V avoir trop aimie, aimee coinme on aiine 
quand on est jeune, c'est-a-dire sans mesure, sans frein." 

MONTALEMBERT, 

Chamber of Peers, January 14, 1848. 



PART I. 



1810-1835, 



IN two cumbrous tomes containing a Latin version 
of St. John Chrysostom — by their date but seven- 
teen years removed from being incunabula — is a prefa- 
tory epistle from a bishop of the sixteenth century to 
the translator of the voUimes, from which the name of 
the translator had been withheld through modesty or 
some other motive. The bishop expostulates with his 
friend for the omission and ends with the remark : 
" If it happen to one walking through a city that h^ 
hear the music of a lute behind him, he is seized 
with a desire to behold the player ; so I in reading this 
book, and knowing it to be a translation from Greek 
into Latin, have desired to know who was the trans- 
lator.'"^ If such be the yearnings inspired by a well- 
done translation, how much stronger and greater are 
those which are created within us by the works of a 
great author who has so often filled our minds with 
the melody of his eloquence ! Has any one had his 
leisure enriched, his imagination fired, his sentiments 
elevated by the perusal of the writings of Montalem- 
bert, and not felt a desire to know the story of the 
life of him wlio has left upon so many pages the im- 
press of a noble and generous nature ? 

* " Sicut enim ambulanti per civitatem, si post tergum cithara personare au- 
diat, cupido incessit videndi quis est ille qui personal ; ita legendi hoc opus et 
e grseco latinum factum scienti, quo interprete factum sit " (Preface by Petrus 
Barrocivus). 
1 



I o MON TA LEMBER T. 



He is known to most American readers as the autlior 
of the Life of St. Elizabeth and The Monks of the West. 
But these incomparable volumes are not his sole claim 
to renown — without them his name had been famous. 
As a public man Montalembert has left a deep mark 
upon his age. He was a leader in his day, first, of the 
Catholic party under the regime of Louis Philippe, claim- 
ing in the full nineteenth century the most elemental 
liberties ; tlien of the conservative elements united under 
the Republic of 1848 against socialism, communism, and 
anarchy; finally, in a private station under the Second 
Empire, wielding his pen and raising his voice in pro- 
test against the wrongs of France and those repeated 
encroachments upon the Papacy which ended in tiie 
total confiscation or the Papal States and the central- 
ization 01 Italy. jf 



Charles Forbes Rene de Montalembert was born May 
15, 1810, in London. His niDther was of Scottish de- 
scent, his father a French exile. On both sides the 
family of Montalembert were of distinguished lineage. 
His paternal grandfatlier was one of the many emigres of 
'92 to whom England had oi)ened her ports, and whose 
rendezvous was the house of tlie illustrious and noble- 
hearted Edmund Burke. James Forbes, the maternal 
grandsire of Montalembert, was a man of scientific and 
literary distinction in his day. Montalembert was born 
at Mr. Forbes' house in Albemarle Street. Owing to 
the unsettled condition of European affairs during his 
childliood he was left for his first eight years in Eng- 
land witli his grandfather Forbes, with wliom he con- 



MONTALEMBERT. II 

tinned to be an object of tender devotion down to the 
day of Mr. Forbes' demise, which occurred at an inn in 
Aix-ia-Chapelle, where death overtook the eldest of the 
party on the way to visit Montalembert's parents. It is 
to these early associations and the subsequent influence 
of his mother that Montalembert owed his knowledge of 
English, which he spoke with the elegance of a native, 
and which was of much service to him in later years. 

In 1816, after the Restoration, Montalembert's father 
had been named a peer of France and sent as minister 
plenipotentiary to Stuttgart. Thither Charles was sent 
towards his ninth year, almost a stranger to his own 
parents and his brother and sister. Returning after- 
wards to Paris, the boy made his First Communion, in 
his thirteenth year, in the church of St. Thomas Aqui- 
nas, in the Rue Bac, where forty-seven years later, wasted 
by the pangs of a cruel disease, he received his last Com- 
munion and heard his last Mass. Even before his thir- 
teenth year Montalembert had given evidence of unusual 
force of character. The records of his diary at this time 
discover a restless love of study rare in one so young. 
The eight years spent in the sober light of his grand- 
father's library, in an atmosphere of books, go far to- 
wards accounting for this early bias. At a time when 
others of the same age were entering with zest into the 
amusements of childhood Charles Montalembert was 
pining over the loss of time involved in such occupa- 
tions. 

At the age of sixteen he entered the college of Sainte- 
Barbe, where he formed his life-long attachment to his 
friend Leon Cornudet. And here it was that, in a writ- 
ten compact of self-consecration, the two friends bound 



I 2 MON TA LEMBER T. 



themselves to their Maker, their country, and to each 
other, to devote their talents and their powers to God 
and freedom. Beautiful and consistent beginning of a 
life made up of unflagging philanthropy and chivalrous 
devotion to the Church ! This remarkable compact was 
made at the suggestion of Montalembert in his seven- 
teenth year, and is liis composition. The seal of this 
life-treaty was the Holy Sacrament of the altar. Will 
the Catholic look further for the secret of its fecundity ? 
The noxious influence of secularized schools, which in 
France have been the main instrument in undermining 
the faith and morals of her youth and making scepti- 
cism the fashion,"^ left unscathed the heart of Charles 
Montalembert and the coterie of kindred spirits who, 
through their whole college course, stood an unbroken 
phalanx in the storm of infidelity which raged around 
them. 

Political questions had always a great fascination 
for this youth, whose family had suffered so much from 
political reverses ; and although a diligent student lie 
frequently indulged his tastes in the direction of politics 
to the detriment of his classical studies. In 1829, there- 
fore, when he left Sainte-Barbe, he went without a prize, 
imitating in this the school-days of many who, before 



* On this subject we will quote Montalembert's own words, uttered publicly in 
1831 before the Chamber of Peers : " . . . The gangrene has entered these in- 
stitutions, these colleges, into everything the university has founded, in all that it 
has protected, wherever it wishes us to place our children and pay to see them 
destroj'ed. You know it as well as myself: is there a single establishment of the 
university where a Catholic child can live in his faith ? ' A contagious doubt, a 
cold and stubborn impietj' ' — do they not reign over all the young souls whom the 
^university pretends to instruct ? . . . " And further on, if more is necessary, he 
says : " Is not an immorality the most flagrant, most monstrous, most unnatural 
inscribed in the registers of every college and in the recollection of esery child 
who has passed but eight years there ? " {Discoiirs^ tome i. p. 14), 



MON TA LEMBER T. 



and since, have become illustrious in the higher walks of 
life. His days at Sainte-Barbe had had tlieir measure 
of college vexations ; but they marked the beginning of 
lasting and valuable friendships for a man whose ideal 
of friendship was ever very high. So that now, as he 
stood at the terminus of college life and looked back 
upon the past through the mellow lights of memory, the 
threshold of the future, concealing behind it the mys- 
tery of things to be, stared cold and inhospitable, and 
he became for a while a prey to that sombre melan- 
choly which is so often the unwelcome appanage of 
delicately sensitive and poetical natures. Questions, 
too, at this time as to his vocation very naturally pre- 
sented themselves ; but he came to no conclusion. 

From college he went to Sweden, where his father's 
diplomatic engagements had called him. But this was 
not a pleasant prospect to him. In the range of frivo- 
lous gayeties in which the creatures of a court employ 
the time Montalembert, although not a cynic,, found 
little or no pleasure. The answered promptings of 
grace had caused him to set a high value on life. His 
ardent fancy had conjured up bright visions of sub- 
stantial success to be gained through the patient and 
noble processes of self-denial, hard study, and a scrupu- 
lous following of his Master. There was nothing, there- 
fore, but vexation of spirit in these occupations, which, 
according to his rigid code of observation, resulted only 
in squandering precious time. Breaking as often as he 
could from court formulas, he divided his leisure be- 
tween garnering materials for a future article on Swe- 
den and a study of the Catholic philosophers of Ger- 
many, to whom the Abbe Studach, a learned and pious 



1 4 MONTALEMBER T. 

priest, had directed his attention. But philosophy was 
not Montalembert's forte. Politics, but politics in the 
highest sense, as involving the cause of human rights, 
was the sphere to which his quick sympathies and rest- 
less generosity of soul especially fitted him. Nature 
had destined him for the heat and anger of conflict. 
Yet in all his passionate devotion to human rights the 
cause of freedom and the cause of truth, as revealed 
by the Master whom he loved, were never disassociated 
in his mind ; and the main struggle of his life was to 
give the lie to the calumny that freedom and revelation 
are antagonistic principles. 

Montalembert was devoted to the study of Burke and 
Grattan, the style of the former of whom bears such 
a close resemblance to the rich profusion of his own. 
Grattan, "as the unwearied champion of the greatest of 
causes," says Rio, "soon acquired in the eyes of his 
youthful admirer the grandeur of the hero of a crusade." 
O'Connell at this time was waging the cause of Catholic 
Emancipation. In this contest Montalembert failed not 
to see the cause of truth and the cause of freedom one. 
It fired his mind wit+i a consuming ardor. And out of 
the reading which his interest in Irish affairs drew him 
into was evolved the plan of writing a history ot modern 
Ireland. His letters and his conversations at this pe- 
riod were of nothing else. And to make his project 
more feasible he decided to visit the scene of O'Con- 
nell's achievements. But this design, which his eager 
enthusiasm for the cause of his espousal had magnified 
into the pivotal act of his life, was destined to be 
thwarted by that intruder who rudely mars so many 
fair plans ; and the history of Ireland, much to the 



MONTALEMBER T. 



15 



chagrin of its. youthful projector, never saw the liglit. 
A sister, Avhose frail liealtli liad broken under the stern 
climate of the North, required his rehictant services as 
a companion for herself and their mother in the tedious 
journey of those days back to their home in France, 
which, liowever, only two of them ever reached. The 
sister died at an inn in Besancon. 

Nursing the wound of private grief, and not alto- 
gether free from a qualm of regret that he liad given 
his services so grudgingly to one whom lie had learned 
to love through the winning agents of gentle manners, 
he arrived in Paris on the eve of another revolution. 
His absence had unfamiliarized him with the bearings 
of French politics, and he was unaware of the coming 
change. He busied himself, therefore, with his own 
prospects. After oscillating between the choice of the 
priesthood and the military service in Algiers he settled 
finally upon the study of the law. His evenings he 
devoted to the arrangement of his observations on 
Sweden in the form of a magazine article. They ap- 
peared in the Revue Francaise^ after undergoing a prun- 
ing operation at the suggestion of the editor, greatly 
to Montalembert's disgust ; after which it was muti- 
lated by M. Guizot, the editor of the magazine, to 
suit that gentleman's peculiar views of things Swedish. 
He now began, too, to frequent a social circle where 
intellectual pleasures were predominant. Lamartine, 
Sainte-Beuve, and Victor Hugo were among his first 
acquaintances of note. He also wrote about this time 
an article on Ireland, and had the mortification of hear- 
ing a friend tell him that his Irish dissertation was 
commonplace and his article on Sweden tiresome. But 



I 6 MON TALEMBER T. 

the humble opinion entertained by him of his own 
ability made such criticism less unlooked for than the 
warm approbation with which liis father received his 
effusions. 

In July of this year — 1830 — he at last set out on his 
much-dreamed-of journ'ey to Ireland. He had not gone 
further than London when the news of the July revohi- 
tion reached him. He hurried to France, only to be as 
quickly sent back to England by his father, who evi- 
dently did not set the same value on the presence of 
Charles at such a time as the young man did himself. 
Although he exulted at the revolution, there still 
''lurked a dread in his delight." To one who had in 
his character as much as Burke or Fox of the power of 
opposition a triumphant cause had not the attraction 
which he found in offensive politics. He was an oppo- 
sitionist, not out of a factious system of criticism, but 
for the same reason that these two great orators were — 
because the governments under whicli they all had to 
live were far from conforming to tlieir liigh ideas of 
justice. His broad humaneness, too, could never lead 
him throughout his life to dissociate from popular vic- 
tories the confiscation, the blood, and the rending of 
dear ties which follow so often in the wake of success- 
ful revolution. His own hopes in a pecuniary direction, 
moreover, were threatened with wreck by the events of 
Les Trois Jours ; for the Montalembert peerage was in 
imminent danger of revocation. In the state of mind 
induced by reflecting on recent events and this near 
possibility of personal misfortune he reached Ireland 
the year after Emancipation. In the diary which he 
afterwards published the readei who is curious can see 



MOM TA LBIMBER 7 '. 



for himself the details of this young knight's picturesque 
journey, undertaken out of his devotion to liberty and 
religion. It would be too much to expect that every 
trait of tlie high ideal whicli fancy had formulated 
should be borne out by the reality. Bat to be able to 
say, as he did, tliat in the main it was as lie had pic- 
tured it, is pionouncing an enviable eulogium. He saw 
O'Connell, shared the informal hospitality of liis house, 
and was present at some of liis s])eeches.* In his 
travels over the country he familiarized liimself with 
the principal phases of Irish life, social, political, and 
devotional. At Maynootli he made the acquaintance of 
Archbisliop Murray and Dr. Doyle, of Kildare, who 
were captivated by his well-directed enthusiasm and 
the evidences of rare ability displayed by him. He 
himself was awed and delighted by such company. 
And we are told that when at the college table one of 
these gentlemen proposed his health the tender-hearted 
youth was moved to tears. In September he left Ire- 
land, where he had spent, he tells us, the two happiest 
months of his life. 



II. 

During his absence many causes were at work which 
were to have an important bearing upon the future of 

=■' Sixteen years later these two champions of liberty without bloodshed vi^xc 
to meet again. But this time upon the soil of France : the older one — " A pain- 
ful warrior famoused for fight "'—broken in health and hastening to Rome to die 
upon ground which the martyrs had enriched with their blood ; the other .cased 
in the shining, armor of great talents, in the mid- splendor of his career, met him 
as the spokesman of kindred spirits, to address to him such words as are proper 
on the lips of those who are pursuing a noble course, when uttered to one who has 
gone before over the same path and left to all who follow the encouragement of 
his example. 

1* 



1 8 MONTALEMBER T. 

Charles Montalembert. There was forming in France a 
party, small in number but rich in talent and enthusiasm, 

Exigui nunie7'o sed bello vivida virtus, 

whose object was to regenerate a healtliy Catholic opin- 
ion in France and seal its union with liberal progress.* 
The brilliant and unfortunate M, de Lamennais and 
the gifted Henri Lacordaire were the central figures 
of this new movement, which had inscribed upon its 
banners the watchword, Dieu et la Liberte ! Mon- 
taleml)ert, returning from Ireland, eager for action and 
pining for a cause, was attracted by this little group. 
They had formed a society — " Agence generale pour la 
defence de la liberte " — and set up a newspaper entitled 
VAvenir, the first number of which appeared October 
15, 1830. Montalembert joined the former and pas- 
sionately devoted himself to the success of the latter. 
At last he had found an object capable of employing 
his pent energies. He found with it, too, the man with 
whom he contracted a friendship which, during the long 
period of thirty-two years, notwithstanding all the heart- 
burns and sorrows which such a period can span, all the 
opportunities which it offered for differences of opinion 
and misunderstandings, remained ever the same, never 
tarnished by the rust of suspicion nor weakened by a 
sense of waning profitableness. From first to last this 
union was a 7?iedicamentum vitce. et immortalitatis. " Nee 
au sein des epanchements et des reves charmants de 
I'adolescence, elle a survecu aux revers, aux trahisons 
et aux lachetes qui ont assombri notre age mur," f 

* See Le Phre Lacordaire^ par le Comte de Montalembert, 1865, Lecoffre, 
Paris, vol. iii. of Montalembert's CEuvres polentiques et diverses, t Ibid. 



MON 7 'A L EMBER T. 1 9 



That friend was Henri Lacordaire. He bad come to 
Paris in 1822 a sceptic, but a sceptic whose heart was 
pure and whose idol was liberty. Through the example 
of edifying associates, such as the celebrated Abbe Ger- 
bet, his heart was opened and the light of truth fell full 
upon his soul. " A sudden and secret toucii of grace," 
says Montalembert, " opened his eyes upon the nothing- 
ness of irreligion.^' In a single day he became a Chris- 
tian, and the next day from being a Christian he wished 
to become a priest." Lacordaire and Montalembert met 
for the first time in November, 1830 ; Lacordaire was 
twenty-eight, Montalembert was twenty. " He appeared 
to me," writes Montalembert, "charming and terrible 
at once, as the type of enthusiasm for the good, of virtue 
armed for the defence of truth." 

After his return to Paris Charles wrote two articles, 
one on French affairs, the other on England, the last of 
remarkable sagacity and foresight. Poland, too, occu- 
pied his attention in her short-lived paroxysm of resist- 
ance, and was the first subject on wliich he wrote for 
VAvenir. It was followed by a letter on Ireland. The 
reader who is curious will find all the articles from his 
pen which appeared in the Avenir by consulting his 
(Euvrcs polemiques et diverses. The style of these arti- 
cles is impetuous — passionate declamation in many por- 
tions rather than disquisition — yet full of fine thought 
and creditable observations. Through all the unshackled 

* Lacordaire tells us that observation had convinced him that religion was ab- 
solutely necessary to the maintenance of human society : •' Je suis arrive aux 
croyances catholiques par mes croyances sociales, et aujourd'hui rein ne me 
parait mieu>: demontre que cette consequence : La societe est necessaire, done la 
religion chretienne est divine ; car elle est le moyen d'amener la societe a sa per- 
fection en prennent rhomme avec toutes ses faiblesses et Tordre social avec toutes 
ces conditions "' (fetter, March 15, 1824). 



2 O MONTALEMBER T. 

elan of these effusions there is a forecast of the splendor 
which marked the style of riper years. 

Shortly after the congenial souls of Lacordaire and 
Montalembert had come to know each other V Avenir 
was seized by the Louis Philippe government and MM. 
de Lamennais and Lacordaire were arraigned. Mon- 
talembert was inconsolable that he could not share 
their lot, regretting, almost with tears, that he had not 
been a member of the Avenir staff. M. Janvier was 
the advocate of M. de Lamennais. Lacordaire per- 
formed with good taste and success the difficult role 
of arguing his own cause. The two journalists were set 
at liberty, and the Avenir enjoyed a triumph. "Lacor- 
daire," says Montalembert, " was not intoxicated by his 
triumph. On the threshold of his house I saluted 
him as the orator of the future. But I saw plainly that 
for him these little vanities of success were less than 
nothing — mere dust in the night." 

In the flush of victory the party of '' Dieu et la Li- 
berte " resolved to attack the existing school system — 
an odious monopoly under the control of the university 
which precluded the existence of all except government 
schools. An offspring of the despotism of Napoleon, 
it had survived both the Empire and the Restoration. 
Its existence was one of the charges which the enemies 
of the Restoration had urged against that regime. In 
framing the charter of 1830 they had declared that the 
existing system of education should be changed ^^with 
the shortest possible delay''' The Avenir now took up the 
discussion of its tyrannical processes and its evil re- 
sults. Some recent instances of its odiousness in prac- 
tice determined Lacordaire and Montalembert to enlist 



MONTALEMBERT. 21 

public opinion in the matter. After having presented a 
numerously-signed petition praying for its repeal, which 
memorial met with no response, the editors of tiie Averiir 
announced that, as it was evident the government in- 
tended to take no action, three of their staff would open 
a free unlicensed school in Paris. It was opened ac- 
cordingly May 7, 1831, by Lacordaire, Montalembert, 
and De Coux, after a short inaugural address from La- 
cordaire. On the morning of the second day, while 
engaged in instructing in elemental matters some poor 
children of the vicinity whom they had collected, they 
were all arrested. Of course ; and they expected to be. 
They were brought before the Police Correctionnelle. But 
Montalembert's father had died in the meantime ; so, 
according to the law governing the case, the young peer, 
with his associates, was arraigned at the bar of the 
Chamber of Peers. Thus it was, as public culprits, that 
the two most eloquent men of their day first appeared 
in the highest tribunal of their country — the one des- 
tined soon to startle Paris with a gift of polemic elo- 
quence unknown since the days of Bossuet and Bour- 
daloue, the other to be the civil leader of the Catholic 
Liberal party of France through the powers of a bril- 
liant pen and a wonderful gift of oratory. As appre- 
ciating better than any one else the cause for the be- 
friending of which they stood under the ban of law, 
they argued their own defence after their advocate had 
presented the law-points. Those who had the enviable 
fortune of being present on this day tell us that the 
discourse of Lacordaire was manly, strong, and ele- 
gant, admirably suited to the occasion and the place — 
a speech that rolled like burning lava over the objects 



2 2 MON TA LEMBER T. 

of his animadversion. Of Montalembert the polished 
Sainte-Beuve says : " Although a mere youth and a de- 
linquent, his ease and grace, the elegant precision of 
his style and diction, veiled this fact. . . . The entire 
chamber listened with a surprise which was not without 
pleasure to the young man's bold self-justification^ and, 
looking at his talent and grace alone, found in it, first 
of all, the highest promise of future public service. . . . 
From tliat day M. de Montalembert, though formally 
condemned, was borne in the very heart of the peerage 
— he was its Benjamin." They were fined one hundred 
francs (twenty dollars) — equivalent to an acquittal, at 
least so regarded on all sides. " It was purchasing very 
cheaply," says Montalembert, "the honor and the ad- 
vantage of having compelled public opinion to occupy 
itself with a question vital to our cause." 

But the days of the Anient}' were drawing to a close. 
The rash and excessive opinions advocated in the jour- 
nal, but especially those of M. de Lamennais on cer- 
titude, had excited the censure of soberer heads in 
authority. The illustrious trio in the warmth of their 
convictions, since the question had created considerable 
controversy among Catholics, determined to appeal to 
Rome, whither they journeyed in November, 1831. The 
details of that voyage are familiar to most readers, and 
we will not attempt to discuss them here.* They led to 
the closing of the Avenir^ to the eventual apostasy of M. 
de Lamennais, to the sore trial of Lacordaire, and threw 
Montalembert into a vortex of contending doubt and 



♦ See Cardinal Newman's Essays, Critical and Historical^ 2 vols., "Lamen- 
nais" : also Montalembert's account in his sketch of Lacordaire above referred 
to ; also Bfownson's li'orks. vol, xii. 



MON TA LEMBER T. 23 

faith from which he finally emerged in safety. But 
there is another phase of this visit to Rome, and a 
closely subsequent one, whicli is not so well known. 
Italy's riches in Christian art, which addressed themselves 
without effect to the absolute mind of Lamennais, found 
in Montalembert a warm devotee. He whose first cry 
of admiration liad been for a monument of Christian 
arcliitecture — the famed cathedral of Rouen — and who 
tells us that from the day he met Victor Hugo laboring 
upon his Noire Dame de Paris he never j^assed a Gothic 
edifice without entering it, was not apt to find unprofit- 
able the opportunity of studying in Rome and other 
Italian cities tlieir galleries of pictures and their architec- 
tural monuments. Their influence was twofold. They 
nurtured his faith and strengthened his affections for the 
Church, and they fitted him for the task of bringing about 
in France, in connectio-n with Rio, a renaissance of 
Christian art based upon a healthier and truer sense of 
the beautiful, a warmer and purer faith, than those upon 
which the Romantic school were founded. The latter 
school was poetical and impressionable only. That we 
may not be thought too trenchant in this matter, we will 
take refuge under the authority of the learned and ju- 
dicious Foisset, the life-long friend of Lacordaire and 
Montalembert. "That which pleased this school in 
Gothic churches," he says, *' were the recollections they 
suggested, the sensation of chilliness [sorte de frissojine- 
ment) which they caused ; the freshness of the vaults, the 
twilight of the sanctuary, the secret passages resembling 
the labyrinths of the forest — in fine, the picturesque ef- 
fects of these monuments upon the azure sky. The Em- 
pire and the Restoration had passed away without this 



2 4 MONTALEMBER T. 

school being able to raise itself beyond impressions so 
miserably superficial." It was not so that Rio and 
Montalembert looked upon Christian art. With them it 
had a deeper and a truer meaning, which addressed the 
heart and not the imagination. For them it was beauti- 
ful because in it they saw the embodiment of the Chris- 
tian faitli. And this was a new view in their day and 
generation. To Rio and Montalembert is due the glory 
of having established its moral superiority. Its cause 
occupied Montalembert throughout his life.* 



III. 



Preceding his companions in their return to France, 
Lacordaire retired to the country ; Montalembert upon 
his arrival took up his quarters in the Faubourg St. Ger- 
main, having, among other friends, such genial spirits as 
MM. de Coux, Sainte-Beuve, the gifted critic, and Fred- 
eric Ozanam, in whose premature death P'rance" lost a 
brilliant scholar, the Church a valiant supporter, and the 
cause of historic truth an advocate of inspired genius. 
Speaking of Montalembert at this time, Ozanam says : 
'^M. de Montalembert receives his friends Sunday even- 
ings, when there is a great deal of varied and expansive 
talk. . . . An odor of Catholicism breathes through these 
little parties. M. de Montalembert lias an angelic coun- 
tenance and is very brilliant in conversation. He is a 

* He became after 1840 a member of the Cojnite des Arts and of the Commis- 
sion des Monuments Historiques^ and so remained down to 1852. He was then 
dropped from these commissions. Imperialism does not love such talents as 
Montalembert possessed. His writings and speeches on art have been grouped 
by him into a volume, Melanges d* Art et de Littdrature. We believe there is 
no English, at least there is no American, edition thereof in our tongue. 



MON TALE MB ER T. 2 5 

good Story-teller and extremely well informed. . . . The 
conversation is animated, tlie speakers grow excited 
sometimes, our hearts are warmed, and one carries away 
a feeling of satisfaction and pure pleasure, good resolu- 
tions and courage for the future." 

From his lodgings Montalembert frequently sallied 
forth on rambles through France, guided in his wan- 
derings by the whereabo-uts of ancient churches and 
monasteries, remnants of mediaeval architecture, whose 
defamed fragments and unhallowed uses drew from him 
a lengthy article, " Du Vandalisme en France," * where 
the indignant protest of a lover of art, and a Catholic who 
saw the symbols and instruments of his faith insulted, 
finds utterance in a resistless torrent of passionate elo- 
quence, the echo of which is heard thirty years later, 
with the gathered force of three decades of study and 
experience, in Les Moines d'' Occident. His Vie de Sainte 
Elisabeth owes its existence to the chance circumstances 
of an extensive art tour made by him through Germany, 
as he himself tells us in the brilliant preface to that 
work. He arrived on the 19th of November, 1833, in 
Marburg, a city of electoral Hesse, for the purpose of vis- 
iting its Gothic church, " celebrated not only for its 
rare and perfect beauty, but also because it was the first 
in Germany where the ogee prevailed over the full arch, 
in the revival of art in the thirteenth century." It bore 
the name of St. Elizabeth, and it happened that the day 
of his arrival was the festal day of the saint. Strange co- 
incidence ! The church was open, but the melodies, the 



* This was addressed as a letter to Victor Hugo, who had used a like strain in 
his article, " Guerre aux Demolisseurs." It is the first thing in his Melanees 
d'Art. 



26 MONTALEMBERT. 

anthems, the solemnities of the Sacrifice had not been 
heard there for three centuries. Its vaulted naves were 
despoiled and deserted, "but still young in their elegance 
and airy lightness. Further on, upon naked altars, 
whence no priestly hand ever wiped the dust, he exam- 
ined with interest ancient paintings on wood well-nigh 
defaced, and carvings in relief, all broken, but both alike 
deeply impressed witli the fresh and tender charm of 
Christian art. . . . 

" The stranger kissed the stone hallowed by the knees 
of faithful generations, and resumed his solitary course ; 
but he was ever afterwards haunted by a sad but sweet 
remembrance of that forsaken saint wliose forgotten 
festival he had unwittingly come to celebrate." He 
pursued the study of lier life through the librai'ies of 
Italy and Flanders. " He successively ransacked those 
rich depositories of ancient literature which abound in 
Germany. Charmed more and more each day by what 
he learned of her," that thought of studying her life be- 
came the polar star of his wanderings. Having ex- 
hausted the stored lore of ancient libraries, he resolved to 
visit in person the places she had graced by her presence. 
'' He went then from city to city, from castle to castle, 
from church to church, seeking everywhere traces of her 
who has always been known in Catholic Germany as 
the dear St. Elizabeth. . . . Finally he returned to Mar- 
burg, where she consecrated the last days of her life to 
the most heroic works of charity, and where she died 
at twenty-four, to pray at her desecrated tomb and to 
gather with difficulty some few traditions amongst a 
people who with the faith of their fathers had lost their 
devotion to their sweet patroness." 



MONTALEMBER T. 



27 



During his sojourn in Germany, where he was mostly 
accompanied by Rio, he made the acquaintance and 
enjoyed the hospitality and conversation of tlie most 
brilliant intellects of that country. At Bonn he met 
the philosopher Windischmann, the jurisconsult Walter, 
Welcker, the renowned philologist and archaeologist, and 
the theologian Klee, who was at tliat time one of the 
three great lights of the Church in Germany. In Frank- 
fort he was graciously received by Madame Frederick 
Schlegel, the daughter of Mendelssohn. Here, too, he 
met the painter Veit, whose Madonna he had ad- 
mired in Rome, and Passavant, the authority of the 
time in matters of Christian art. In Dresden he was 
amicably received by Tieck, since Goethe's death the 
corypheus of romanticism. Here he met Raumer, the 
historian. In Berlin the jurisconsult Savigny, Gans, 
professor of law, Madame Arnim (Bettina Brentano, 
Goethe's friend), Ranke, the historian, and Alexander 
von Humboldt were among his acquaintances. Here, 
too, he met Radowitz and attended the lectures of 
Schleiermacher and Raumer.* In Munich he resided 
nine months (from December, 1833, ^o October, 1834), 
pursuing his artistic studies and cultivating the friend- 
ship of such men as Schelling, Dollinger, and Gorres. 

The elevating effects of such society upon the still 
plastic character of Montalembert — the refining influ- 
ences of Germany's rich treasures in paintings, in sculp- 
tures, in arcliitecture, acting upon the stores of rich ma- 

* We could, and probably should, have made the list longer but for the pro- 
crustean limits which we have assigned ourselves. At Gottingen he saw the 
brothers Grimm ; at Stuttgart, Christian Pfister, the historian of Germany, and 
the critic Wolfgang Menzel ; at Tubingen, the poet Uhland and Mohler, "■ the 
prince," says Foisset, " of Catholic theology in the nineteenth century." 



2 8 MON TA LEMBER T. 



terial laid up in his mind by his Italian journeys — can 
scarcely be overrated. This period was, therefore, by 
no means the least important one through which his 
character passed in its stages of development. Can be 
traced to this epoch those phases of his style which pos- 
sess a richness of coloring and a perfection of art suffi- 
cient of themselves to embalm his works. But, as he 
has told us above, what guided him through all tliese 
wanderings was his design of writing tlie Life of St. 
Elizabeth. This is well attested by the foot-notes and 
quotations of tliat book — so splendid a work of art and 
of erudition. 

His diary of this period — when he had come again to 
Marburg — gives us a touching picture of Montalem- 
bert, racked on the one side by the anxieties occasioned 
him by the Lamennais imhi'oglio, on the other by an op- 
pressive sense of his own loneliness. His was one of 
those natures wliich at all times, and especially under 
such circumstances as the present, yearn for the sym- 
pathy of woman's love — the one element which lacking 
reduces them to something like supineness. Comparing 
himself to his friends Rio and Albert de la Ferronays, 
both of whom were on the eve of happy marriage, he 
passes upon himself a painful judgment of self-deprecia- 
tion, calling his life a failure and feeling himself 

" . . . in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes ; 
Wishing him like to one more rich in hope, 
Desiring this man's art and that man's scope." * 

While pursuing his investigations in the unsympa- 
thetic Lutheran quietude of Marburg, oppressed by 

*^He spoke of his life at this time as " toute fiinie pour lui— a la fois manqu^e 
et brisee." 



MON TA LEMBER T. 



29 



sentiments of melancholy, who should come as a vision 
lighting up the night of his sombre thoughts but the old, 
strong friend — Lacordaire. " He came to me at the 
tomb of St. Elizabeth to persuade me," said Montalem- 
bert. " I was at first displeased with my friend, because 
he had taken another way from mine and had pro- 
nounced himself more publicly and decisively. I was 
even bold enough to reproach him with his apparent 
forgetfulness of those liberal opinions with which we 
had both been set on fire. ... It was then that my 
eyes, at first distracted and irritable, but soon, and al- 
ways after, wet with the tears of everlasting gratitude, 
penetrated into the very depths of that generous soul " 
{Le Fere Lacordaire). 

The Paroles d'lf/i Croyant had not yet appeared, 
nor Lamennais' more terrible declaration that his re- 
flection had " led him into grave doubts on many points 
of Catholicism, and that in consequence he had re- 
nounced all priestly functions." When this came Mon- 
talembert felt that the Rubicon in tliis affair had now 
been reached. On the Stli of December, 1834, after 
four days' reflection, he sent from Pisa, where we shall 
soon see him, to Cardinal Pacca a categorical act of 
submission to both encyclicals. Montalembert had 
long clung to Lamennais, endeavoring to console and 
strengthen him under the hardest of all trials to an in- 
tellectual man — the censure of his opinions by a crush- 
ing authority — urging, beseeching, appealing to him to 
submit. He had even contributed to his support, and 
went many times to see him. But finally Montalembert 
saw what the keener Lacordaire had presaged, and was 
at last obliged to pen the cruel words which told La- 



30 



MONTALEMBER T. 



mennais that henceforth their paths would lie apart — 
words not more cruel to him who received them than to 
him from whom they were wrung '*by the cruel gripe 
of a rigid necessity"; for Montalembert must have felt 
that he was bidding adieu to a man condemned to a fate 
worse than death. But in the company of Lacordaire, 
even in the atmosphere of Marburg, everything was 
blithe again for Montalembert. 

Crossing the Alps as winter approached, Montalem- 
bert descended into Italy to join the Ferronays at Pisa. 
Here begins the thread of that narrative so beautifully 
woven into Le Recti d'line Sceur, par Madame Craven 
(" The Sister's Story," by Mrs. Craven). 

In July, 1836, appeared Histoire de Sainte Elisabeth 
de Ho7ig7'ie. The success of this work, from whatever 
point of view it be judged, was a very marked one. It 
has been translated into all the European languages, 
and has served, and will continue to serve, as a model 
to those who in writing the life of a saint — of one of 
those heroic beings who have forbidden to themselves 
any of the splendors of this life — desire to see such a 
record endued with all the controllable graces of art in 
composition and poetry in thought. 

'' In perusing," said Cardinal Wiseman in reviewing 
this book, " the various works which come under our 
hand in our duty as reviewers, our feelings must vary 
according to their character. We speak not at present 
of such as stir up indignant and unpleasant emotions; 
the volume before us banishes the thought of all such 
from our minds. But in turning over pages of a more 
agreeable nature sometimes we may be astonished at the 
erudition displayed by the writer ; sometimes we may 



MONTALEMBER T. 



31 



rather admire liis sagacity and genius ; some books may 
convey to us a high opinion of his moral qualities, and 
others make us long for his acquaintance as a man of 
amiable and virtuous character. Seldom, liowever, has 
it been our lot to experience the peculiar feelings which 
have accompanied the perusal of the work now on our 
table — feelings more akin to jealousy than to any other 
we have described. It was not the research, nor the 
rich poetical genius, nor the deep religious tone, nor 
the eloquent language of its youthful author, conspi- 
cuous and admirable as all these qualities are, which 
riveted our attention or secured our sympathy ; it was 
the sincere love, the enthusiastic devotion, with which 
his task has been undertaken and accomplished that 
has made us, so to speak, envy him the* days and the 
years which he has spent upon its performance. So 
pure must have been the heart and soul while occupied 
with the sainted object of tlieir spiritual affections ; so 
closed must have been the feelings against ihe rude 
materialities of life in this sear generation while in- 
haling the healthy freshness of a greener age; so full 
of delicious meditation, of varied hope, and of con- 
scious success must his pilgrimage have been. ... In 
England it will be probably imagined by many that 
a peer who could think of writing a saint's life must 
be a bigot and illiberal, to say no worse. Now, M. de 
Montalembert is neither : he attaches not the happi- 
ness of his country to the augury of a name ; he ad- 
vocates the cause of rational liberty under the govern- 
ment that actually exists, because he considers true 
liberty as based upon a religious, a Catholic principle, 
which should predominate under every form of goy-^ 



32 



MONTALEMBER T. 



ernment, and is the inalienable right of every Chris- 
tian people." * 

The book was dedicated by Montalembert to Jie me- 
mory of that sweet sister who died at the inn in Besan- 
9on. " Thus," beautifully remarks Mrs. Oliphant — " thus, 
not like a common book, but like the visionary, poetic 
revelation it was, it came into the world robed and 
adorned with the tender recollections of the past and 
the undefined, passionate, youthful hopes of tlie future. 
We have seen a little case with two miniatures which it 
was Montalembert's custom till the end of his life to 
carry about with him wherever he went — the portraits* 
of two girlish faces : one over whicli her early fate has 
thrown to the spectator a gentle sadness ; the other fair 
and vigorous with the beauty of vitality. The two por- 
traits were those of his sister and his bride. These two 
fair faces come before us as by magic when we take up 
the beautiful book v^hich embodies and expounds the 
young writer's very heart ; they hold it between them, 
the one inspiring him out of the celestial past into which 
she had gone, the other equally inspiring him out of the 
celestial unknown in which she still was. This was his 
poem which he chanted with his heart rent asunder by 
exquisite past sorrow which was not all pain, and in- 
spired by the thrill of that unknown happiness which 
was to come." 

It was shortly after the appearance of this first book 
that its author took that step upon which the hap- 
piness and success of most men's lives depend. He 
was married at Trelon, August i6, 1836. His bride 

* Cardinal Wiseman's article, " St. Elizabeth of Hungary," in Dublin Re- 
view, October, 1837. 



MON TA LEMBER T. 3 3 

was the daughter of Count Felix de Merode, a distin- 
guished Belgian Catholic and one of the noblest charac- 
ters of. h,^3 day. The Abbe Gerbet celebrated the nup- 
tial Mass^ and from the eloquent address delivered by 
him upon the occasion we will extract this passage : 

" He who has disposed, with such admirable wisdom, 
of the little details of the material world, to make them 
more in harmony with the wants of man, has provided 
with a care still more marvellous for the order of the 
spiritual world. The saints who have seen the farthest 
into the designs of God have thought that He has estab- 
lished between the souls whom He has placed on this 
earth secret harmonies which cause them to seek, to be 
attracted to, to be called reciprocally by each other 
when they are to tread together the ways of life and 
assist each other by mutual support. Tliose who are 
destined to live in retirement, far from the regard of 
the world, are likewise not isolated ; they find there 
companions of their prayers and their sacrifices, pre- 
pared by God for them. It is not less certain that 
among those who are called to sacred marriage, among 
these innumerable souls, there is not one for whom God 
has not, from all eternity, predestined another soul who 
ought to be its companion, its guide, its terrestrial angel. 
When searching with an upright and a pure will every 
soul should encounter that other reserved by God, 
whether it is to separate from the world or to remain 
in it. . . . " 

"I do not know," says Foisset, " but it seems dif- 
ficult to despise a religion which inspires such senti- 
ments and such thoughts." 

Departing from Trelon, the happy pair journeyed 



34 



MONTALEMBER T. 



through Switzerland to Italy. In November they were 
in Venice ; in December they arrived in Rome, where 
they met Lacordaire. Montalembert and his countess 
were accorded a triple audience by the pope, Gregory 
XVI., and he has given a minute account of these in- 
terviews, which we will translate for the reader : 

" I presented myself at the Vatican. Scarcely had 
I arrived when I was ushered before the Holy Father. 
I kissed his sacred feet. He assisted me to rise, took 
my hand, holding it a long time clasped in his own and 
pressed against his heart, with a goodness so touching, 
so paternal, that I was moved to tears. He spoke to 
me with the greatest affection, calling me ever ' caro, 
carissimo conte di Montalembert.'' He congratulated me 
upon my attachment to the Holy See, and said, with 
a tone the most paternal, that it was very natural that a 
young man full of ardor (and he added, of talent) should 
be drawn away by the Abbe de Lamennais, but that he 
trusted in me as a devoted and faithful son. I was so 
touched, so penetrated by feelings of respect and grati- 
tude, that I dared scarcely to speak. He congratulated 
himself at the proofs of detachment from Lamennais 
given by Lacordaire, Cambelot, and myself. I spoke of 
the Abbe Gerbet ; he received the name rather coldly. 
He delivered a great eulogium on France, the king, and 
the French in general. He spoke to me of our bishops, 
of the bishop of Mans (Bouvier), oi Versailles (Blan- 
quart-Bailleul), whom he called un santo. In fine, after 
the most familiar and affectionate conversation he bade 
me good-by, adding, ' Au revoir ! 

At the second audience Madame de Montalembert 
was present. "We were received by the pope," con- 



MON TA LEMBER T. 



35 



tinues the same narrator, '' in the library of the Vatican. 
The Holy Father treated us with the greatest cordiality, 
obliged us to be seated, requested us to approach nearer 
with our chairs, and then began to converse witli us in 
the most animated manner. He gave us a full and de- 
tailed account of the Lamennais affair, such as it pre- 
sented itself to and was treated by him. He pointed 
out, with good right assuredly, the extreme moderation 
v/hich he had employed. He assured us that he had 
caused to be examined with the most scrupulous care 
the memorial which we had addressed him (together 
with other papers) by a congregation of cardinals and 
theologians, on whom he had imposed the pontifical se- 
crecy, so that nothing was known of this. He expressed 
himself in severe terms as to the plots against his autho- 
rity and the consideration due him formed by Lamen- 
nais, e di quello da che dimoj'ava (Pere Ventura) — 'plots 
of which he knew very well,' said he. His praise of La- 
cordaire was beautiful, and he repeated to me the amia- 
ble and paternal words of the first audience. ..." 

"On the 1 2th of February we, Madame de Monta- 
lembert and myself, had our farewell audience with the 
pope. I commenced by offering him Z'tZ/^/V^rj-/// Ca- 
tholique, wherein was to be found the admirable refuta- 
tion oi Affaires de Rome by the Abbe Gerbet. I profited 
by the occasion to draw the conversation to the analo- 
gous composition by Lacordaire {Letter on the Holy See) 
which the archbisliop of Paris had forbidden to appear. 
The pope enumerated some of the insufficient reasons of 
M. de Quelen, as if to excuse him. I did not hesitate 
to say to him : ' Holy Father, there are other reasons — 
the political antipathies of the prelate.' The pope re- 



3 6 MON TA LEMBER T. 

plied, with entire sincerity : ' I sincerely deplore the in- 
tervention of the arclibishop in politics. The clergy 
should not mix in politics. It is not my fault if the 
arclibishop so conducts himself. The king knows, the 
ambassador knows, and you know also that I have done 
all depending upon me to reconcile him to the govern- 
ment. The cimrch is the friend of all governments, 
whatever be their form, provided they take not away 
her liberty. I am well content with Louis Philippe ; I 
wish all the kings of Europe resembled him. . . . ' " 

Of the foregoing interviews we liave given all that we 
deemed of interest to the reader and in keeping with 
the subject in hand. 



part SeconJ). 



" Oji ne me tronvera ja77iais dajis les ra7igs de ceux 
qui 7ie defendent les bonnes causes que quand elles ne sont 
pas metiacees, et qui les abandonnent quand elles sotit 
serieusement compromises, qui diininuent par consequent 
leur courage et leur dSvoument a 7nesure que le danger 
aug7nente." 

MONTALEMBERT, 

Discours 12 Juin, 1S45. 



PART II 



1835-1857. 



MONTALEMBERT took his seat in the House 
of Peers in 1835. By the rules governing that 
body he was entitled to a seat on attaining his twenty- 
fifth year, but could have no determining voice in its 
deliberations until he was thirty. He could not vote, 
but he might take part in its debates ; and of this privi- 
lege he availed himself. He did not speak frequently 
nor, as a rule, at great length ; but he brought to the 
dull discussions of the Upper House the fire of a youth- 
ful genius inspired by the loftiest principles. Those 
efforts embraced within tliis period of parliamentary 
abeyance, in which the youthful orator gives evidence 
of a studious consideration of his subject, are marked 
by a clearness, a comprehensiveness of political vision, 
a patriotic and philanthropic motive of action, and a 
grace and elegance of diction which would have done 
honor to the oldest peer who listened to their delivery. 
In his utterances he was ever independent, but without 
losing that modesty which is the greatest ornament 
youthful talents can possess. He was ever warm in the 
advocacy of his principles, unpitying to the object of 
his attack, without being betrayed into loss of temper 
or arrogance of attitude. His indignation at the op- 
pressions of Poland and the shameful piecemealing of 



40 



MONTALEMBER T. 



Belgium endeared him to his hearers as a man having 
the welfare of his kind at heart ; and they admired tlie 
intelligence which scorned any lower standard in politi- 
cal action tlian the universal principles of justice. They 
saw in his attitude towards the government — now one 
of support, now one of dignified censure — an absence 
of all systematic attack, and the presence of that up- 
rightness of character which, for the sake of being right, 
did not fear to be out of office. Finally, in the frank- 
ness, the fearlessness with which he never, quailed from 
defending before an unsympathetic auditory, and in de- 
fiance of an infidel and intolerant press, the tenets of his 
faith and tlie aspersed hierarchy of that faith, they could 
not but recognize a man who loved truth for its own 
sake and would, if occasion offered itself, become its 
brilliant and formidable champion. 

Notwithstanding that he had been heard upon many 
occasions with flattering attention by the Peers, Monta- 
lembert found himself in his thirty-second year in a po- 
sition of almost complete isolation upon the two ques- 
tions — freedom of the Church and freedom of educa- 
tion — which, through his gallant leadership, were to fuse 
the talents of Catholic France into a concordant body. 
These causes were to engross his time and his talents 
very largely down to 1850. The educational laws of 
France under the Louis Philippe regime were of a most 
deplorable character. The university — as the system was 
called — was a government monopoly of large and pow- 
erful patronage, which precluded the existence of any 
parallel institution. In other words, all the schools were 
public-schools, in the most aggravated sense with which 
experience under our own eyes in America enables us 



MON TA LEMBER T. 4 1 

to endue that phrase. It alone possessed the power of 
teaching every tiling but the most elemental branches, 
and the so-called '' right " to teach these was a licensed 
right under this system. It alone could confer the bac- 
calaureate degree, which was, by virtue of existing laws, 
the si?ie qtid non to all political and professional prefer- 
ment. This state of affairs forced the Catholic, nolens 
volens, to send his cliildren to the government institu- 
tions. The reverenced representatives of his faith, the 
learned Jesuits and Dominicans, with whom his heart 
yearned to entrust his children, were banished from 
the sphere of education, and he was obliged either to 
see his children grow up in ignorance or be exposed 
in government schools to the loss of their faith and the 
ruin of their m.orals. These schools were maintained 
by the joint taxes of Catholics and unbelievers. And 
as the Catholics were in the majority, upon them 
weighed heaviest the burden of their maintenance. 

As we have seen, the editors of the Avenir. had at- 
tacked tliis system with vigor in 1831 ; and Montalem- 
bert's first utterance in the Chamber of Peers was 
against it. But the noise of this first onset had died 
away, and nothing of a thorough and organized charac- 
ter was done towards fomenting public opinion upon the 
subject until the year 1842. It is true that Montalem- 
bert in the tribune, from 1835 to 1842, had not allowed 
an opportunity to escape for attacking the exclusive 
character of the university system. But, after twelve 
years of broken promises on the part of the government 
and all too patient deferred hope upon the part of Ca- 
tholics, the contest opened. 

Montalembert on the 6th of June, 1842, in a speech 
2* 



4 2 MONTALEMBER T. 



of admirable temper and unescapable logic, exposed the 
tyranny of the educational laws. This speech was the 
alarm of battle to the Catholics of France. To the ex- 
istence of these schools for those who wished to send 
their children there Montalembert made no objection ; 
but to forcing Catholic youth there he did most strenu- 
ously object as a violation of the most sacred rights of 
conscience — a measure opposed to the most elemental 
principles of liberty. But his opponents, unwilling to 
accept his clearly-defined and logical position, pretend- 
ed to see therein an attempt to overthrow the university 
and substitute the clergy in its place ; and the usual 
string of trite horrors which Protestant and infidel 
imaginations conjure up upon such occasions was now 
paraded from the tribunes of both chambers. 

At the very opening of the contest, when Montalem- 
bert was preparing to deploy therein all his forces, the 
failing health of his countess obliged him to accompany 
her to Madeira. In the meantime the Catholic body 
were not idle. The contest between the advocates of 
educational freedom and the defenders of the university 
continued to develop itself during the year 1843, but 
outside of Parliament. Sixty bishops of France in the 
meantime had uttered their dignified and determined 
protest against the laws. However, 

" Coelum non animum mutant qui trans mare currunt." 

From Madeira, in the fall of 1843, Montalembert sent 
out his remarkable political manifesto. Devoir des Catho- 
liques dans la question de la liberie d' enseignement (" Duty 
of Catholics in the Question of Educational Freedom "). 
Its effect was wide-spread. It moved all Catholichearts 



MON TA LEMBER T. 43 

and marked an epoch. But to make effectual the con- 
victions which it warmed needed action, and concerted 
action. Montalembert, however, was not a dreamer, a 
broacher of principles and theories ; he was pre-emi- 
nently a man of action. In March, 1844, lie hastened 
to France to take advantage of what had been gained 
and to thwart the opposition which, even "among Catho- 
lics, had been shown to the decisive step — the formation 
of a committee to direct the disseminated forces of the 
Catholic body. The Archbishop of Paris was opposed 
to any committee. AT. de Vatimesnil was in favor only 
of a secrete committee. Montalembert, seconded by 
Pere de Ravignan, insisted upon an open committee, of 
action as vv^ell as of consultation. Pious prelates, among 
others the archbishop of Rouen, thought it was not a 
matter at all for secular interference and defence. But 
the favorable attitude of the papal nuncio (Mgr. For- 
nari) and the published utterances of the bishop of 
Langres to Montalembert encouraged and finally en- 
abled him to prevail. The Electoral Committee for Re- 
ligious Liberty was then constituted under the presidency 
of Montalembert and the vice-presidency of Vatimesnil, 
a former Minister of Public Instruction, and Charles Le- 
normant, member of the Institute. The eloquent Abbe 
Dupanloup and Mgr. Clausal de Montals became the 
advocates of the measure. " The Catholic youth were 
full of ardor. The incentives came directly from the 
pulpit of Notre Dame, just occupied, with incomparable 
eclat, during Lent by Pere Ravignan, during Advent by 
Pere Lacordaire." * 

On April 15, 1844, Montalembert ascended the tri- 

* Foisset. 



44 MONTALEMBERT. 

biine in flagellation of M. Dupin's attack in the Lower 
House on the attitude of the clergy in regard to the uni- 
versity. Dupin, in his much-applauded attack, had 
ended with the cry, heard frequently before and since 
from French deputies inculcating religious intolerance : 
Soyez iinplacables ! Montalembert's reply was a de- 
fence of the Church. However much we may admire 
in this speech the brilliant impetuosity of the orator, this 
is not the principal object of admiration which it pre- 
sents. What we must most admire is the fearlessness 
• of his attitude and the utter absence of all human con- 
siderations in his defence of the truth in the midst of a 
body hostile to him and his cause. These are what con- 
stitute the admirable and the heroic in his position. He 
stood alone, his eye flashing conviction and defiance, 
among the deists and materialists who surrounded him, 
strong in- the same spirit which had sustained Paul be- 
fore the Acropolis. This speech rang like a bugle-note 
from one end of France to the other, endearing the 
name of Montalembert as the champion of the faith 
among that people so generous and prompt in their re- 
cognition and appreciation of great abilities, especially 
when enlisted upon the side of the weak and the un- 
popular. The people of Lyons, in the ardor of their 
admiration, struck a bronze medal for Montalembert as 
the defender of the liberties of the Church, and had en- 
graved upon it the famous words with which this speech 
closed : '^ We are the sons of Crusaders, and we will not 
recoil before the sons of Voltaire." Seven days later, 
April 23, the debate opened upon the wqw proj'et de lot 
introduced by Villemain, Minister of Public Instruction. 
The effect of this project, if it became a law, would only 



MONTALEMBERT. 45 

be to strengthen the university in its monopoly and 
hamper Avith destructive requirements the non-govern- 
mental elementary schools. Its supporters came, re- 
cruited from the arsenals of hatred and sopliistry, to its 
defence. Montalembert met them at every point and 
refuted them — upon the grounds of history, of political 
ethics, and of contemporary experience. Of the law 
under discussion he said : 

" It substitutes for a statu quo which is detestable a 
future even more alarming. Not only does it maintain 
the university, with its fiscal and inquisitory spirit, as 
the custom-house of intelligence, but by exigencies un- 
heard of before ... it will within a brief period de- 
stroy all the private institutions now in existence. 

"I do not know whence comes this dangerous folly 
of modern states, and especially of a certain school in 
France who wish to impose upon governments the role 
of doing everything, of conducting, of absorbing every- 
thing. ' The smaller the number of things over which a 
government exercises its authority, the longer shall that 
government last.' 'Tis not I who have said this ; 'tis 
not the utterance of a Jesuit nor an Ultramontane ; they 
are the words of Aristotle, and I conclude from them 
that you who wish to extend your authority over that 
which heretofore has been respected — that you will not 
last very long. 

" Never, even in the most absolute states, since Chris- 
tianity has transformed the world, has any one ever 
dreamed until our day of this direct and exclusive in- 
tervention of the state in education. This destructive 
doctrine has its foundation in the past only upon the 



46 MONTALEMBERT, 

authority of Minos, of Lycurgus, and of Robespierre — 
that is to say, it is founded upon fable, upon paganism, 
and upon that which is worse than paganism. . . . 



'* To resume : You are in presence of two systems — 
the system of despotism and the system of liberty ; and 
to personify them I will call them the English system 
and the Russian system. 

" The English system, where, alongside of venerable 
and fecund institutions especially adopted by the state 
and sanctioned by religion, there is complete liberty for 
others. The Russian system, where the iron hand of 
power has invaded even the education of the hearth, 
and where no one can even be a preceptor without 
ministerial sanction. 

" Evidently your law tends twenty times more to the 
Russian than to the English side — more to the side 
of barbarity organized by despotism than to the side of 
civilization enriched by political dignity and indepen- 
dence. . . ." 

Such is the tone of this strong discourse. Fain would 
we reproduce in their entirety its bursts of indignant 
sarcasm, its resistless onset of eloquent argument, its 
graceful transitions to the facetious and the amiable. 
But we have not the space to follow the orator in his 
course demonstrating the sceptical fruitfulness of the 
university system — its injustice to Catholic parents ; its 
maintenance against the earnest protests of sixty bishops 
voicing the sentiments of millions of their flocks ; its 
violation of all political canons, as shown by the writings 
and speeches of numerous authorities. 



MONTALEMBER T. 



47 



The debate Avas carried on by Montalembert and his 
colleagues, Baron Segiiier, the Marquis de Barthelemy, 
and Count Beugnot, from April 6 to May 21, during 
which period he made, besides the discourse just quoted 
from and those passages-at-arms which are the accom- 
paniment of every debate, two set speeches full of 
splendid thought and powerful argument. His dis- 
course delivered upon the 8th of May in defence of 
the religious orders excluded from teaching even ele- 
mentary branches contains a review of the history of 
monasticism and a defence and review of the history of 
the Jesuits, and is a masterpiece of historical summary. 
Considering the proscriptive effects of the bill, the orator 
stops a moment to pay a tribute to the Jesuit and Do- 
minican — Ravrgnan and Lacordaire — who were then 
filling France with the wonders of their eloquence, and 
to point out the merciless injustice of a law destined to 
exclude such men from even the most elemental branches 
of instruction. 

The habile and unprincipled Left and their organs, 
and those of the Right in sympathy with them, feeling 
their walls of defence crumbling under the strokes of 
their opponents, did that, says Montalembert, which men 
do in a place besieged. They made a cunning diver- 
sion — a vigorous sortie. They were attacked in the 
name of liberty and the Church, and they could not 
withstand. They made a detour. They fell upon the 
most vulnerable flank of their opponents : they raised a 
cry against the Jesuits. Thiers, who was one of those 
who study that they may follow to their advantage the 
tides and currents of popular prejudice, in compliance 
with the clamors of the Left began his attack upon the 



48 MONTALEMBERT. 

Jesuits in 1845, and the timorous ministry followed in 
the wake.* 

In no utterances was Montalembert more eloquent, 
more terrible to withstand, than when he arraigned be- 
fore the house and the country that ministry in its 
shameful subserviency to an opposition *' which in its 
demands gave the lie to all its professed principles, 
which had ascended the course of the ages and rum- 
maged the bowels of the past, to draw forth therefrom 
proscription and servitude to impose them upon their 
fellow-citizens, "f 

Where prejudice has warped the reason arguments 
are of little avail. The odious measure was voted by 
the Chamber of Peers. But although the government 
seemed to triumph with its ready majorities, the Catho- 
lic cause was only more firmly welded by the blow. 
The government was alarmed by the feelings among the 
Catholic body, and, by an inconsequence natural to in- 
justice, pointed to Montalembert, who was the Achilles 
of the Catholic cause, as the originator of the discon- 
tent. As if, indeed, the opposer and not the proposer 
of evil laws was to be held responsible for their effects ! 



* Alison {History of Europe) ^ in his account of the educational question, has 
done nothing more than follow Thiers and inaptly quote Montalembert. He has 
gone into the hypothecation of motives; the facts he has ignored. He quotes 
Thiers' statement that the clergy were conspiring to overthrow the university. 
He does not quote Montalembert where he demands that same freedom in educa- 
tion which England enjoyed ; and, as if the loczis quo could control the principles 
of liberty, Alison becomes the champion of a state of things in France which he 
would scorn to advocate for Great Britain, or would be scorned and hooted 
did he advocate them there. He has wofully missed the whole issue either 
through lack of diligence in his research or through preponderance of prejudice 
in his judgment. But as we are not as venturesome as Alison in divining motives, 
we will not decide which. 

t Speech on the measure announced against the Jesuits, June ii, 1845 — Dis" 
cours-, vol. ii. p. 173, 



MONTALEMBERT, 49 

By the Catholics Monlalembert was recognized as the 
champion of violated consciences, and addresses and 
letters in praise of iiis efforts came from all quarters, 
assuring him of the admiration of tlie good and the 
great, " which, after the testimony of conscience to a 
sacred duty worthily accomplished, is the sweetest re- 
compense a noble heart can receive." 

The bill was sent to the Lower House, where it re- 
mained unacted upon when the Chamber of Deputies 
was dissolved in June, 1846. So that the efforts of 
Montalembert were not wholly without fruit. In his 
pamphlet. The Duty of Catholics in the Approaching 
Elections^ he thus summarizes the political history of the 
last three years : " We had against us all that was popu- 
lar, influential, and powerful — a large majority in both 
chambers, ninety-nine out of every hundred of the 
newspapers ; we have had against us the tribunals and 
the academies, the Council of State and the College of 
France, the intrigues of diplomats in Rome and the 
pride of false science in Paris, statesmen and thinkers, 
sophists and legists. And yet we have not been con- 
quered ! " 

This pamphlet bore fruit, and the next chamber saw 
a number of eminent Catholics among its number. One 
hundred and tiventy- two deputies had pledged themselves 
to protect the Catholic interests. 

Salvandy, new Minister of Public Instruction, with- 
drew m consequence the Villemain educational pro- 
ject and announced one of his own fabrication, suggest" 
ing some mitigation of the rigors of the former law, but 
by no means granting the educational freedom demand- 
ed. This new bill was never debated. Montalembert 



50 



MONTALEMBER T. 



attacked it, however, in tlie columns of the Correspon- 
dant, and " literally pulverized it," says Foisset. But the 
country was laboring in the throes of an approaching 
crisis, and more violent elements than those of Catho- 
lic agitation, which confined itself within constitutional 
bourns, were demanding the attention of the govern- 
ment. 



II. 

Early in 1848 Montalembert uttered his famous 
speech on the " Sonderbimd." Seven Catholic and 
conservative cantons of Switzerland had formed a de- 
fensive league to resist the attacks of radicals against 
the ancient federal constitution of the country. The 
Diet, under the control of the radical elements, pro- 
nounced the dissolution of the " Sonderbund." The 
seven cantons protested through their deputies. The 
thirteen radical cantons answered by sending an army 
against them. The seven cantons yielded one after an- 
other upon conditions which the majority broke as soon 
as the minority were in their power. The most shame- 
ful confiscation was established; the provisional govern- 
ment passed ex post facto laws to aid them in their vio- 
lence ; the ministers of religion. Catholic and Protes- 
tant, were shorn of their rights ; even the Sisters of Char- 
ity were driven like cattle, with three days' notice, from 
the country ; nothing was too sacred to escape the ava- 
rice and the fury of these unbridled factions. The 
French government by prompt interference could have 
prevented these horrors and desecrations ; but, in the 
characteristic lethargy of its foreign policy, did nothing. 



montalembert: 51 

"... What was at stake at the other side of the Jura 
were not the Jesuits nor the cantonal sovereignty ; it 
was European order and peace, the security of the world 
and of France ; that is what has been vanquished, stifled, 
crushed at our gates, upon our frontiers, by men who 
would ask nothing less than to launch from our side of 
the Alps and tiie Jura the brands of discord, of war, and 
of anarchy. {Tres-bien! tres-Ineni) Therefore I do 
not come to speak in behalf of the vanquished, but to 
the vanquished — vanquished myself to those who have 
been vanquished; that is, to the representatives of the 
social order, of the liberal order, of tlie social regularity 
which has been vanquished in Switzerland, and which 
are menaced in all Europe by a new invasion of the 
barbarians. {Seusatio^i.) . . . 

" Last year the last vestige of Polish nationality was 
wiped out ; this year the first cradle of European liberty 
is a victim to a similar attempt. Only last year the 
crime was that of absolute monarchies ; this year it is 
committed by pretended liberals who are at heart ty- 
rants of the very worst species. But then as to-day 
what have we witnessed ? The abuse of force, the 
stifling of liberty, of right, by a brutal and impious vio- 
lence (nambreuses marques iT approbatioti) ; the violation 
of sworn faith, the superiority of number erected into 
a dogma, and falsehood serving as the arm and apparel 
of violence. \Nouvelles marques d' approbation-) 

" Let no one come here to say, as certain blind but 
generous spirits have, that radicalism is the exaggeration 
of liberalism. No, it is its antipode, it is its extreme op- 
posite ; radicalism is nothing else than the exaggeration 



52 MONTALEMBERT. 



of despotism {tres-bien ! ires-bien l), and never did despot- 
ism assume a form more odious. Liberty is rational and 
voluntary tolerance ; radicalism is absolute intolerance 
which stops only before the impossible. Liberty im- 
poses upon no one useless sacrifices ; radicalism submits 
not to a thought, a word, a prayer opposed to its will. 
Liberty sanctifies the rights of minorities ; radicalism 
absorbs and destroys them. In a word, liberty is respect 
for man, while radicalism is the hatred of man raised to 
its greatest intensity. {Vive approbation,) No, never 
did Muscovite despot, never did tyrant of the Orient, 
more despise his kind tlian these radical clubbists who 
gag their vanquished adversaries in tlie name of liberty 
and equality. {Tres-bien l) 

" I believe, moreover, that no one has a better right 
to proclaim this distinction, for I challenge any one to 
love liberty more than myself. And here I must re- 
mark that I wish to accept neither as a reproach nor as 
a eulogium that which the Minister of Foreign Affairs 
said to me recently, that I was exclusively devoted to 
religious liberty. No, no, gentlemen, that to which I 
have been devoted is liberty in its entirety, liberty for all 
and in all things. I have always defended, always pro- 
claimed it. I, who have written so much, said so much 
— far too much, I acknowledge {non ! non !) — I defy any 
one to find a word emanating from my pen or fallen 
from my lips which was not destined to serve liberty. 
Liberty! — ah! lean say it without circumlocution, it 
has been the idol of my soul {mouvement) ; if I have any 
reproach to make myself it is that I have loved it too 
well, loved as one loves when young — that is to say, 
without^measure, without stint. But I do not reproach 



MONTALEMBER T. 



53 



myself, I do not regret it ; I wish to continue to serve 
it, to love it always, to believe in it always ! {Trh- 
bien /) And I believe that I have never loved it more 
nor served it better than on that day when I have forced 
myself to tear off the mask of its enemies, who garb 
themselves in its colors, who usurp its flag to soil and to 
dishonor it. {Marques unaiiiuies et prolonge'es d'assentl- 
inent.) ..." 

The orator ceased amid prolonged bursts of applause. 
The sitting was suspended. The peers quit their seats 
under the influence of the discourse and formed in the 
hemicycle in numerous and animated groups. Guizot, 
President of the Council and Minister of Foreign Af- 
fairs, notwithstanding Montalembert's censure of the 
government, refused to mar the effect of the speech by a 
reply. In the fervor of their admiration many peers 
forgot the rules of the House and demanded that the 
speech be printed. 

This was his last speech before the Chamber of Peers. 
It was the brilliant sunset of the first part of his public 
career, giving promise of a brighter to-morrow. Six 
weeks later the elements so mercilessly condemned in 
that speech overthrew the government and added it to 
the rubbish of revolution. 



III. 

, With the monarchy of Louis Philippe disappeared 
Montalembert's, and with it all other peerages ; in its 
stead came the Republic of 1848. For a time a cloud 
of dismal foreboding rested upon him, and a recurrence 



54 



MONTALEMBER T. 



of the horrors of '93 seemed not improbable. But power 
fell partly into the hands of men who swayed the clubs. 
Their influence held the emeutiers at bay till the better 
elements of society, being reassured by the absence of 
any very extravagant outbreaks, took courage and ral- 
lied around Lamartine, who was then enjoying the high 
tide of a popularity which had been obtained by a skil- 
ful middle course during the previous months and by 
means of his Girondins, in which book he had " poetized 
the most shameful features of the Revolution." * After 
the first shock Montalembert, accepting the situation 
with as much grace as his fears admitted of, proceeded 
to extend and systematize the action of the Catholic 
body through France in behalf of public order and set- 
tled government. The series of political manifestoes is- 
sued by him during the first year of the Republic, as 
president of the '' Electoral Committee of Religious Free- 
dom," are masterpieces of political wisdom and of the 
highest literary excellence. Many departments desired 
him for their representative. He was elected from the 
department of Doubs. 

Radicalism, socialism, and red- republicanism were 
now rife in Paris, Lyons, and Marseilles. Every day 
the action of the clubs became more alarming, and, 
until their entire suppression by Napoleon as emperor, 
they continued for four years to keep the country in a 
ferment. These three cities were the repeated theatres 



* It is seldom that the pen and the voice of a deputy have ever become so 
potent with the mass, who make and unmake dynasties, as Lamartine's had. 
Sage judges have not hesitated to give his pen and voice the unenviable praise 
of having by their power precipitated the Revolution of 1848. See N, Wm. 
Senior's Jourftaly 1848-1852, Conversations with Alphonse de Tocqueville 
etc. vol. i. 



MONTALElMBERT. 55 

of the insurrections and murders which those elements, 
led by bad and ambitious men — Blanc, Ledru-Rollin, Al- 
bert, Blanqui, Proudhon — continued to incite. Monta- 
lembert, seeing in this complexion of affairs the. ruin of 
the wliole social fabric, pledged himself to his constituents 
to meet these elements with a most vigorous opposition. 
" I will combat not only Communism properly so-called, 
which dares not show itself in all its revoliful nudity, 
but tliat Communism, still more dangerous, which pre- 
sents itself under the form of fiscal laws, excessive im- 
posts, forced appropriations, new monopolies ; which 
tends throughout to substitute the state for the individ- 
ual, to gather gradually all of the products and all of 
the forces of the country into the hands of power, and 
which, could it triumph, would dry up all the sources of 
industry, of art, of intelligence, of spontaneous effort, 
would carry disorder and misery beneath the most hum- 
ble roofs, and would make France, impoverished and 
enslaved, the laughing-stock of Europe." This was the 
political chart which guided him until he left public 
life. 

The worst apprehensions were realized by the terrific 
insurrection of Red Republicans and Communists in June 
following in the streets of Paris, which lasted seventy 
hours and cost France more generals than the battle of 
Beresina or the field of Waterloo. 

Montalembert supported Louis Napoleon's candi- 
dacy for president, being convinced by the attitude of 
Cavaignac that France would in two years of his regime 
be ruined morally and materially. He was the first 
man of eminence who announced his support, but 
others soon followed his example — Barrot, Thiers, Ber- 



56 . MONTALEMBERT. 

ryer, Mole, It was, after all, but a question of alter- 
natives. 



IV. 

The period of the Republic has been pronounced, by 
a critic '^ whose praise will not be suspected, the golden 
period of Montalembert's career. And it is so, not be- 
cause religious and educational freedom, which had been 
to a certain extent the c.iuse of his life so far, in exclu- 
sion of general politics, was not one worthy the devo- 
tion of the highest abilities ; but it was so because this 
cause broadened out under the Republic into the do- 
main of the vast and imperative wants of a society 
racked to its centre. The cause of educational and re- 
ligious liberty was now not alone at stake ; but those 
sister-principles, equally great and equally elemental, >. 
which lie at the base of human society and are its sus- 
taining force were also involved. The formidable ad- 
vocate of a single measure, to which he has marshalled 
the efforts of a life, may cease to be great when the line 
of defence and attack stretches out to embrace the uni- 
versal principles of government. It was because in this 
new field he displayed not only all of his old prowess, 
but even surpassed his former efforts, that he has, as 
well as others, considered tiiis the brightest period of his 
public service. It was under the Republic that all his 
former efforts were to bear fruit and the rectitude of 
their aim to be admitted, and even applauded, by those 
who had hitherto been his implacable opponents. 

Coming from the sedate Chamber of Peers, where 

* Sainte-Beuve, 



MONTALEMBER T. 57 

nothing but a faint and occasional expression of coun- 
ter-sentiment interrupted the orator in the impetuosity 
of utterance seeking the expression of swifter thought, 
he found himself, in the assemblies of the Republic, 
stopped in almost every period by rumeurs et dene'ga- 
tions^ bruits^ exclamations^ rires, tumultes from the Left ; 
like a fiery steed accustomed to a free rein, who falls to 
the possession of a master who at every manifestation of 
metal seeks by a rude and unreasonable use of the curb 
to break his courage and subdue his pride. But sus- 
tained by his own fearlessness and encouraged by the 
applause of the majority of the liouse — the representa- 
tives of the peaceful elements of society — he did not 
succumb to the clamors of empirics and anarchists. 
Ay, more, he taught them to cower under his glance 
and crouch beneath the lash of wholesome truths forci- 
bly expressed."^ 



* " Up to this time he was admired, but not followed except by those belonging 
to his immediate party. Now [November 5, 1849, is the date of the article] he is 
followed willingly by the representatives of all parties. Not only the eloquence and 
brilliancy but the meaning of his noble speeches is accepted and acknowledged " 
(Sainte-Beuve, Premiers Lundis). 

" He is always perfectly at ease. He has few gestures, but he possesses the 
qualities essential to successful action. His voice, pure and sustained {d'une 
longue kaleine), is distinct and clear, with a vibration and accent easily marking 
the generous or the ironical. The son of an English mother, he has in his voice, 
through its sweetness, a certain rise and fall of accentuation which answers his 
purpose well, letting certain words drop from a greater height and resound further 
than others. I ask pardon for these particulars ; but the ancients, our masters in 
everything, particularly in eloquence, gave a minute attention to them, and a 
great modern orator has said, ' A man has always the voice of his mind ' ^'{/i.) 

Another description of his person may be grateful to the reader. 'Tis by the 
Abbe Dourlens : 

" His action is the external manifestation of this eloquence. His gestures are 
sober, but eas3'-, noble, dignified, aristocratic. His head slightly thrown back 
gives him an aspect of provocation {ton provocatetir). A perpetual smile trem- 
bles upon his lips, and, changing from moment to moment, becomes by turns 
benevolent, disdainful, and satirical. His eyes, which are large and melancholy, 
show in succession with glances of energy all the different sentiments expressed." 

3 



58 MONTALEMBERT, 

It was not till the 2 2d of June, four months after the 
revoliitiorij that he raised his voice in the Constituent 
Assembly. It was to combat a measure of the Provi- 
sional Government for the forced purchase by the state 
of all the railroad lines in France. 

*' . . . I find in this project," he said, " an attack upon 
the right of property, which is the base of all society — an 
attack upon the spirit of association, which, it seems to 
me, is a peculiar property of democracy and the sole 
guarantee of its advantages. ... 

" The Minister of Finance has said that the spirit of 
association applied to public works can only co-exist 
with monarchical and aristocratic institutions. This 
opinion is refuted by the opinions of the liberal phil- 
osophers whom I have just quoted ; again, by the ex- 
ample of Russia— that is to say, the most absolute 
monarchy in existence, and which, on the contrary, has 
precisely applied to public works that very principle 
of which you demand the triumph in the name of 
democracy. . „ . 

" Let us not assert that which I am contending for is 
an Englisli or an American principle ; let us say, what 
is tlie truth, tliat it is a liberal principle. Let us re- 
cognize that the contest is not between aristocracy or 
royalty on the one side and democracy on the other ; 
the contest is between the spirit of liberty and the spirit 
of monopoly, between exaggerated centralization and 
the free development of individual forces, the free de- 
velopment of tlie principle of association." 

The result of this project, liad it become a law, would 
have been to increase by a frightful numerical accession 
the army of bureaucrats. But in this measure the so- 



MONTALEiMBERT, 59 

cialist, who is at heart the most aggravated of egotists, 
saw a new reahii open to liis plunder, just as the Com- 
munist Courber,~lhe leader of the ruffians who razed 
the Colonne Vendome, avowed that personal avarice and 
not political conviction had dictated him. Tlie metal it 
contained was what he coveted. This measure would, 
moreover, have propagated a spirit of distrust and un- 
rest fatal to all extended industry, and thrown down at 
once the barriers against irrational legislation, whose 
tendency is ever towards establishing the communism of 
the state upon the ruins of individual and corporate in- 
dustries. In these matters, said Montalembert, "il n'y 
a que le premier pas qui coute." 

This discourse is a masterful congeries of all the 
principles which should guide a state that, having 
entered upon the turbulent sea of democracy, finds it- 
self confronted with difficulties of this character. Its 
value cannot change until the present trend of the 
world towards universal democracy has also changed. 
Throughout its delivery the majority of the house en- 
couraged him by vehement applause, and when he 
ceased large numbers crowded around to cover him 
with their congratulations. 

In the same spirit he advocated with all his power 
the necessity of constituting two legislative chambers. 
Only a summary of this speecli remains. He advocat- 
ed, too, the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly on 
the ground tliat it was not in sympathy with the new 
president of the Republic, harmony between executive 
and legislative departments being of great importance 
in the present juncture. This speech was delivered 
amid the most shameful interruptions from the Left. 



5o MON TA LEMBER T. 

But it was the expression of the sentiments of the ma- 
jority. The measure was carried. 

These speeches gave him at once a prominent position 
in the Conservative ranks. Mr. Senior, the friend of 
Alexis de Tocqueville, who was in Paris, says in his 
Journal: "Mole, Thiers, Montalembert, Broglie, and 
Berryer are considered the heads of the coalition which 
calls itself the party of order, or the moderate party. 
. . , They have been nicknamed the five Burgraves."* 

Animosities outside of the Radical ranks, which had 
sprung mostly from conflicting interests, ceased almost 
wholly during the first years of the Republic. A com- 
mon danger had made a common cause, and men stood 
together who had stood opposed for decades. " It was 
a time when the bad had combined, and the good felt 
the necessity of associating together, or else fall, one by 
one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle." 

To the minds of a large number of the Constituent 
Assembly there seemed nothing too sacred to entitle it 
to escape the rude touch of innovation. Among other 
radical measures it was proposed to reconstitute the ju- 
diciary. Montalembert offered an amendment tending 
to give to the principle of irremovability {quamdiu se 
bene gesserint)^ proclaimed in theory by the constitution, 
a practical and immediate guarantee. That it was an 
occasion where arguments of the strongest character 
were demanded, and the presentation of the principle 
involved in the amendment in the most convincing 
manner was necessary, is evident from the fact that 
the vote in favor of Montalembert's proposition had a 
majority of but twenty voices. 

* Journals kept in France and Italy ^ 1848 to 1852. 



MONTALEMBER T. 6 1 



V. 



The Constituent Assembly dissolved, Montalembert 
was one of an electoral committee charged with looking 
after the interests of the Conservative party — a fusion of 
Orleanists, Legitimists, and Republicans — as opposed to 
the reactionists in the elections of 1848. He was re- 
elected by his former constituents, and was also re- 
turned by the department of C6tes-du-Nord. 

When Rossi, the pope's minister, was assassinated, 
and the day fqllowing Monsignore Palma, the pope's 
secretary, shot down by his side, and Pius IX. himself 
was obliged to escape from Rome in disgrace before 
men of the same principles who had overthrown the 
Swiss cantons and raised the red flag in the streets of 
Paris, General Cavaignac, then dictator in France, sent 
to the pope's assistance thirty-five hundred men. The 
following year, when, regaining possession of his estates, 
he was entering Rome, Napoleon informed the pope, 
through Colonel Ney, the conditions upon which he was 
to resume his authority, in terms* as uncalled for as 
they were insulting to all the past liberal measures of 
the pope — measures which had been used by the revo- 
lutionists only as a means to terrorize and anarchize. 

The commission charged with an examination of the 
credits relative to the expedition to Rome pronounced 
itself energetically in favor of the absolute indepen- 

* *' Amnistic g^nerale, secularisation des emplois, promulgation a Rome du 
Code Napoleon." This was simply a piece of electoral claptrap used by Napoleon 
and meant to count with the masses in France, whom he was secretly and syste- 
matically winning over to his favor preparatory to the coiip-d^ dtat and the re-estab- 
lishment of the Empire. 



6 2 MONTALEMBER T. 

dence of the Sovereign Pontiff. And Thiers {jnij-abile 
dictu l) was its author. 

"Without the authority," he said, "of the Sovereign 
Pontiff Catholic unity would be dissolved ; without this 
unity Catholicism would perish in the midst of sects, 
and the moral world, already so terribly shaken, would 
be destroyed from centre to circumference." 

Victor Hugo, amid the acclamations of the Left, on 
the 19th of October, 1849, took occasion to glorify this 
action of Napoleon and asperse the pope. To this 
speech Montalembert replied before its echo had died 
out, and before had subsided the passions of hate on 
the one side, and of indignation and alarm on the 
other, which it had aroused. 

The opening words of Montalembert fell like a burst- 
ing bomb amid the Radicals who blackened the benches 
of the Left, always to a greater or less degree a rookery 
of violent passions never silent. " The speech," he said, 
" to which you have just listened has received the chas- 
tisement it merited in tlie applause with which it has 
been welcomed." Immediately the Assembly, beginning 
at the Left, was thrown into a violent tumult beggaring 
description, which the efforts of the president, at first 
impotent, at last succeeded in sufficiently quelling to al- 
low Montalembert to utter another sentence. 

" Since the word chastisement wounds you, gentle- 
men (addressing the Left), I withdraw it, and I substi- 
tute in its place that oi recompense.'' This was followed 
by another series of tumults more violent, if possible, 
than the former, and requiring more effort and time upon 
the part of the president to suppress. At last, as if ex- 
hausted by their paroxysms of rage, they allowed Mon- 



MON TA LEMBER T. 63 



talembert to continue, but witli the usual 7'timeurs and 
reclamations throughout the course of the speech, in the 
midst or at the end of the expression of every enno- 
bling sentiment. He first demolished the position of 
the Radical champion, reviewed in a rapid and masterly 
manner the supine results of monarchic interference 
with the papacy, went over the whole question of the 
temporal authority of the pope, painted the personal 
career of Pius IX., and used words of the most pa- 
thetic and stirring eloquence in speaking of the Church. 

" His speecli/' says the Journal des Debats^ "ended 
amidst storms of applause such as were unknown before 
to deliberative assemblies." Throughout its delivery 
the majority of the house were in a perfect fever of en- 
thusiasm, and repeatedly stopped the orator to give ex- 
pression to the most lively commendation — now by long 
cheers and bravos, again and again by triple salvos of 
applause. The orator's sentiments were sanctioned by 
the carriage of the measure in behalf of which he spoke 
by a vote of 467 to 168. The triumpli of this speech 
was even greater tlian that of the discourse upon the 
*'Sunderbund." 

" This victory was sweet to his heart," says Madam 
Oliphant* — " more sweet than any simply political vic- 
tory could have been. He records it in his journal with 
a thrill of gratified emotion." " The Right applauded 
with such enthusiasm," he says, " as to make their cheers 
resemble an act of faith. It was the finest moment of 
my life. . . . The attitude of tlie Assembly was like a 
solemn adhesion to the Church. One man said that his 
impulse had been to go at once to confession." Thiers, 

* In her Meinoir of ISIontaleinhert. 



64 MONTALEMBERT. 

his old opponent, whose good opinion was wortli hav- 
ing, said of him : " He is the most eloquent of men and 
his speech the finest I ever heard. I envy him for it, 
but I hope the envy is no sin ; for I love thfe beautiful 
and I love Montalembert." Berryer addressed him 
these words : " Your strength lies in this, that you are 
not absolute but resolute." Sainte-Beuve, the lavish 
admirer of everything pagan, concedes so much to the 
moderns as to say that " the passage concerning the 
Church, that pathetic impersonation, even for those who 
regard it only from a distance and from an artistic point 
of view, must remain one of the happiest inspirations 
of eloquence." 

! Some of the passages of this speech are not only wor- 
thy of remark for their beauty but for the transition 
which they mark in his politics from the stand which 
Montalembert took, in the settled state of society under 
the monarchy of Louis Philippe, in favor of unlimited 
freedom, to the distrust, which the violent action of the 
Radical elements had created in his mind, of France 
being worthy of so large a fund of liberties. Not that 
he loved liberty any the less. But he felt that there were 
large and aggressive numbers who would only make an 
abuse of it and turn it into an engine for overturning 
society. 

"... We have received a frightful defeat. Our expe- 
rience has turned not only against us, not only against 
Pius IX., but against liberty herself. (Bravos nombreux 
a droite.) It is on this account that I would bring here 
before me all those demagogues, all those reactionists of 
whom I have but just spoken, and for once tell them the 
, truth. {Vive approbation a droite. Rvvievrs a gauche?) 



MONT A LEMBER T. 65 

" A Droit E — Tres-bien ! tres-bien ! Farlez! parlez! 

" M. DE MoNTALEMBERT — Listen, then, to that truth. 
If I could address all of them at once I would say : Are 
you aware of what is the greatest of all your crimes be- 
fore the world ? It is not alone the blood of the inno- 
cent shed by you, although it cries to Heaven for ven- 
geance against you ; it is not alone that you liave sown 
ruins with a lavish hand throughout Europe, although 
this might be the most formidable of arguments against 
your doctrines. No ! It is that you have disenchanted 
the world of liberty. {Acclamations a droite : Tres-bien! 
tres bioi !) It is that you have in some way disoriented 
the world ! It is that you have compromised or over- 
thrown or annihilated in all honest hearts that noble be- 
lief! It is that you have rolled back towards its source 
the torrent of human destinies ! {Applaudissements pro- 
long es sur les bancs de la major ife'.y 

Ov/ing to the incendiary, aggressive, and blasphemous 
state of the press of Paris and throughout the country, 
wherever the reactionists* principles were represented, 
Montalembert became one of the advocates of restrain- 
ing laws. "I commenced," he said, " some fourteen 
years ago my political career by voting and speaking 
against the [press] laws of September. I come to-day 
to vote and to speak for a law which in my opinion is 
much more severe than those laws of September. But 
I am not the only one obliged so to act. {Rires iro- 
niques a gauche?) Others more illustrious than myself 
are in the same position. . . ." 

He then proceeds to paint the character, the conduct, 
and the nocent influence of that press which had abused 
its liberty and surpassed all limits, adding to the cor- 



66 . MONTALEMBERT. 

rupted masses of the city a stimulant to revolt, and 
among the ignorant and credulous of the rural popula- 
tion, whom it had found pure and peaceful, cultivating 
an appetite which was fast making that population cor- 
rupt too by the eagerness and rapidity with which it 
was assimilating the food of communistic errors and 
misrepresentations. 

Certain writers who have spoken of Montalembert's 
career between 1848 and 1852 have thought that they 
had discovered in his attitude a change of principles.* 
He would indeed be a strange statesman who should in- 
sist upon applying always the same remedy to every 
complexion of disorder. It was a change, not of princi- 
ples, but simply a change of the remedy for that society 
which he found so very ill. Here are liis own words : 

" I vote for this project, certainly not because it is op- 
posed to the liberty of the press, but because,* on the 
contrary, it is for the liberty of the press, because it is 
destined to preserve us from a dictatorship, because it 
is destined to preserve liberty from its own excesses, to 
render an homage and a service to that liberty which I 
have always loved, always served, and wish ever to con- 
tinue to serve and to love." 

For the same reasons are we to account for Montalem- 
bert's being one of the most active of a commission of 
seventeen \ who elaborated 2. projet de lot upon electoral 

* Mrs. Oliphant's Memoir of Montaleinbert, and Sainte-Beuve. 

t This commission was composed as follows : MM. Benoit d'Azy, Berryer, 
Beugnot, De Broglie, Buffet, De Chasseloup-Laubat, Daru, Leon Faucher, Jules 
de Lasteyrie, Mole, De Montalembert, De Montebello, Piscatory, De Seze, le 
General de Saint-Priest, Thiers, De Vatimesnil. They constituted the emi- 
nence, the talent, and the eloquence of the National Assembly. They were, of 
course, a shining mark for the diatribes of the democratic press. " The heads," 
said the Voix dzi Peuple, " of tYvtsQ vieillards entetes are pledged to the infernal 
gods of the revolution." 



MONTALEMBERT. 67 

reform which was not an abolition (as false or ignorant 
critics have called it) of universal suffrage, but simply a 
limitation and regulation of universal suffrage. The law 
proposed was similar to laws regulating the suffrage of 
the United States — it required a three years' domicile 
before the exercise of the riglit of suffrage. It was 
aimed at the vagrant, turbulent, and irresponsible voters 
who, under previous laxity governing voting, were fo- 
cussed upon doubtful departments where some promi- 
nent Radical was seeking an election. A law directed 
towards the mitigation of such abuses needs no apology. 

Out of the debate on this measure resulted a very 
lively passage-at-arms between Montalembert and Vic- 
tor Hugo, in wliich these antipodal champions met in 
the shock of single combat. The Left cheered Hugo 
and interrupted Montalembert ; the Right applauded 
Montalembert and interrupted Hugo. Hugo was goaded 
by the interruptions, but Montalembert was not. Their 
strokes were terrific ; but Montalembert's were too 
rapid, too direct, too vigorous to be withstood. Mon- 
talembert struck twice to Hugo's once. Hugo fought 
with denunciation ; but Montalembert used sarcasm, 
humor, ridicule, and facts. 

During the prorogation of the National Assembly in 
1850 Montalembert went to Rome for rest and change. 
While there the municipality, Avith the approval of Pius 
IX., sent liim, through their president. Prince Pierre 
Odescalchi, a diploma of Roman citizen with a gold 
medal commemorative of his voyage. This title has 
been but rarely conferred upon strangers. Petrarch 
was the first. Generals Oudinot and Rostolan, com- 
manders of the expeditionary army, were the last to be 



6 8 MONTALEMBER T. 

invested. The illustrious La Moriciere had received it 
after the battles of Castel Fidardo and Ancona. 



VI. 

I The vexed question of education was to reach a solu- 
tion under the Republic. On the i8th of September, 
1848, Montalembert ascended the tribune of the As- 
semblee Constituante to urge an amendment to the con- 
stitution tending to that end. It was a field in which he 
was a master ; and the forty-four octavo pages embrac- 
ing his discourse attest by their crystallized thought the 
deep consideration the subject had received. At the 
Left the speech was met by that intolerance with which 
the egotists and hypocrites of the Mountain have al- 
ways sought to stifle all utterance disconsonant to their 
own opinions. They wearied him by their interrup- 
tions, but they did not conquer him. Goaded by con- 
stant interruptions, he never lost his temper ; but, on 
the contrary, as if to give the highest proof of balance, 
at times the least looked for discomfited the Left by 
the finest strokes of that caustic and playful humor 
which characterizes his eloquence. The main point of 
this speech was that the liberty demanded was an im- 
prescriptible right. But we cannot go into an analysis 
even of its arguments. It should be read to be appre- 
ciated. The old phantoms this question had always 
raised, of a monopoly on the part of religious orders as 
the result of any concession by the state, was shown 
again to be baseless. He demonstrated to them that 
the tendency of the state system had been to recruit 



MONTALEMBERT. 69 

the ranks of socialism. From the educational halls of 
the state have gone forth the utopists and innovators, 
the venom of whose philosophy was corrupting France 
everywhere ; not only in the centres of commerce and 
manufacture, but in distant cantons heretofore un- 
tainted. Though this speech failed to carry the amend- 
ment, its masterful expose of the sources of the social 
evils of France bore fruit in many minds within and out 
of the Assembly. It dissipated much of the prejudice 
heretofore encumbering the discussion, and it aided the 
more enlightened and influential spirits who fortunately 
were in the majority in the next house to see the educa- 
tional question in the proper light. 

Soon after the opening of the new session of 1848 
M. de Falloux, the new Minister of Public Instruction, 
busied himself to prepare a projet de lot which would 
respond at once to the wishes of the advocates of educa- 
tional freedom and the exigencies of the constitution. 
To this end he named a commission, with Thiers as pre- 
sident, and composed of eleven representatives, among 
whom was Montalembert, three members of the old 
royal council of the university — one of whom was Cou- 
sin — and eight other gentlemen familiar with the ques- 
tion, and among these was the Abbe Dupanloup. After 
devoting much time and labor to the discussion and 
study of the subject in their chambers the commission 
presented on the i8th of June, 1849, a projet providing 
for the abolition of all previous authorization for open- 
ing a school and of the certificate of studies hereto- 
fore required ; a radical reform in primary education ; 
disfranchisement of the little seminaries in charge of 
religious, and the freedom of religious congregations 



70 MONTALEMBERT. 

heretofore interdicted from teaching ; and although ex- 
tending the surveillance of the state over the little 
seminaries, as the constitution imperiously demanded, 
limited this surveillance to questions of public order ojily. 
Montalembert accepted the projet. The result was a 
breach between Louis Veuillot and himself, brought on 
by the violent attacks of the editor of the Univers, and 
the result, says Foisset, was " the decapitation of the Ca- 
tholic party." It was a compromise which circumstances 
demanded, and results justified Montalembert's action. 
Louis Veuillot stigmatized it '' comme une secrete de- 
faillance de la raison et du coeur." But tliere came 
from a higher judge, and one whose judgment both 
could respect, an endorsement of Montalembert. It 
came as a balm to the wound which, as a man of lofty 
and disinterested purpose, he must have received in 
having his motives questioned by those who sat with 
him at the same political hearthstone. Pius IX. sent 
a special despatch through his nuncio expressing his 
entire satisfaction with his conduct and that of MM. 
les Comtes Mole and De Fallolix. But Montalembert 
never regained after this breach that wide-spread influ- 
ence which he before possessed over the Catholic body. 
Such is the power of the leaders of the press, their 
influence for good or for evil. The hasty and uncon- 
sidered calumny is sent out. But no denial can ever 
overtake all the evil it sets afoot. Vox missa nescit 
reverti. 

The most astonishing feature of the history of this 
treaty, as Montalembert called it, is that, while it is 
practically a complete victory for his cause (since the 
surveillance reserved to the university was disciplinary 



MONTALEMBERT. J I 

only), Adolphe Thiers was the president of the commit- 
tee presenting and approving iht p7'oJet, and Cousin one 
of its advocates. These bitter antagonists of religious 
and educational freedom under the monarchy — Thiers, 
in the Lower House, scourging the Jesuits and conjuring 
religious phantoms ; Cousin, in the Chamber of Peers, 
fighting Montalembert, with weapons from the same arse- 
nal, at every step — range themselves alongside of the 
son of the Crusaders and become the upholders of his 
long-fought-for cause. One feels tempted to ask, if 
the peaceful demands of the Catholics of France were a 
menace and a danger, as proclaimed, under Louis Phi- 
lippe's regime, how is it that, when society was shaken to 
its foundations and fear dwelt in all hearts, Thiers and 
Cousin could recommend those very reforms which were 
so terrible before to their sensitive imaginations ? 

Thiers had to and did confess : " I say it frankly, the 
partisans of the Church, the partisans of the state, are 
for me the defenders of society, of that society which I 
believe to be in peril, and I have given them my hand. 
I have given it to M. de Montalembert ; I still hold out 
my hand to him, and I hope that, in spite of our dif- 
ferent points of view, it shall remain in his for the com- 
mon defence of society. ..." 

But this was not all ; there is still another feature of 
this victory not less humiliating to Thiers. Before the 
final passage of the educational bill an amendment was 
proposed against the Jesuits. Who was its most me- 
morable opponent? That very Adolphe Thiers "in a 
memorable discourse," says Montalembert, "when he 
proved that the constitution, in promising liberty to all, 
interdicted every repressive measure against the Jesu- 



72 



MON TA LEMBER T. 



its." The proposed amendment was rejected by 450 
against 148 voices. 



VII. 

After the vacation of 1851 it became evident that 
another political crisis was approaching. The next year 
the present Assembly would reach the term of its exist- 
ence and the president of the Republic would be re- 
tired, being re-eligible under the constitution. The 
Duke de Broglie proposed that the constitution be 
amended in order to make the president eligible for a 
second term. Montalembert supported this proposition, 
believing that, under the circumstances, it was the only 
proper course. But the project failed. A large number 
of those who had heretofore constituted the Conserva- 
tive majority of the house divided off, some coalescing 
with the Left, some ranging themselves under the stan- 
dard of Legitimacy. All party men poised themselves 
for a change, all standing ready, for the sake of their 
own success, to coalesce with the partisans of any other 
regime. 

Montalembert thought he saw in the new attitude of 
parties a condition of things which might result in an- 
other dictator. Thiers foresaw autocracy. " U Empire 
c' est fait !^ he said June 18, 185 1. As Montalembert 
had no predilections, was not a party man, he supported 
Napoleon as the representative of order and authority. 
He was in reality deceived by the modest demeanor 
and calm utterances of the prince-president. But he 
was not alone in his illusion. Under the empire of this 



MONTALEMBERT. 73 



illusion he made his speech of February 10, 1851, in fa- 
vor of the president. It not only displeased Napoleon 
by its reservations, but it estranged from Montalembert 
all the chiefs of the majority. Again the victim of in- 
dependent and conscientious action, he found himself in 
a position of political isolation. 

The state of affairs induced by the opposition be- 
tween executive and legislative branches led to the cotip- 
d'etat of December 2, 185 1, whereby, with the army at 
his back, Napoleon took into his bands all the reins of 
government. The change came as silently as snow that 
falls in the night. Astonished Paris awakened the next 
morning, and in the placards which covered the walls 
read this last feature of her checkered history. 

After the coup-d'etat Napoleon appointed, through 
the columns of Le Aloniteur (the government organ), a 
Consulting Commission, composed of eminent men, nine in 
number, and Montalembert was one of the nine named. 
He immediately declined ; but, being urged by men of 
high consideration not to separate himself from the 
prince-president at this critical juncture, consented to 
remain upon the commission. Their argument was that 
what had been done was irreparable ; that France had 
no other alternative at that moment but of the dictator- 
ship of the "'reds " or that of the president assisted and 
inspired by honest men ; that it would, moreover, place 
him in a position favorable for the success of those mea- 
sures to which he had devoted his life. He proceeded 
to the Elysee and sounded Napoleon. Though the lat- 
ter promised nothing, he encouraged every hope. 'Twas 
then that Montalembert published his letter exhorting 
the Catholics of France to vote for Napoleon. This 



74 MONTALEMBERT. 

letter embodied none of the adulation of the courtier, 
but was full of honest reserve and caution : 

"I neither pretend to guarantee \\\^ future nor judge 
tlie past. . . . To vote for Louis Napoleon is not to 
approve all he has done ; 'tis to choose between him 
and the total ruin of France. ... I must urge you to 
note that I preach neither absolute confidence nor il- 
limited devotion. I do not give myself without reserve 
to any one. I do not profess any idolatry, neither 
the idolatry of force of arms nor that of the reason of 
the people. I am simply for society against socialism ; 
for \.\\t. possible liberty of good against the certain liberty 
of evil ; for Catholicism and against revolution." 

Foisset, who was Montalembert's life-long friend — the 
man whom he consulted more than any other, and who 
may be said to have had the key to his heart, so frank 
and open was their intercourse — thus criticises his ac- 
tion : 

"I have said, even before the fall of the Empire,* that 
the gravity of such an act could not be denied ; yet it 
should not be exaggerated. On the 12th of December, 
185 1, Montalembert made the mistake of believing tlie 
Socialist party stronger than it was really after its defeat 
in the streets of Paris j he feared too much that the ab- 
stention of Catholics from voting on December 20 would 
have permitted the red element to wreak a revenge 
which would have been frightful, and he acted as he did 
in consequence. He was deceived, certainly, as to the 
danger at that date ; he was likewise deceived (and still 
more so) as to the merit of the remedy ; Louis Napoleon 
was much less anti-socialist than our friend believed him 

* In the Li/e of Per e Lacordaire. 



MONTALEMBER T. 



75 



then. . . . But if Montalembert accepted a temporary 
dictatorship (that which is not incompatible with liberty 
as the normal state) he did not renounce, as others, the 
parliamentary regime, he did not insult it ; he abstained 
from every theory affected with absolutisfu. In a word, 
he made a mistake ; he was not guilty of an apostasy." 

His illusion lasted about twenty days. As soon as 
Napoleon was re-elected he listened to Montalembert 
with ill-disguised impatience of his counsels. Later, 
when Napoleon named his senate, he appointed him to 
a seat, but Montalembert rejected the appointment with- 
out a moment's hesitation. No form of solicitation 
could induce liim to accept. He felt that he was want- 
ed as an ornament."^ And he was the last man in 
France to place himself in such an attitude. 

The rupture between himself and the Elysee, though 
in fact dating from this time, did not become public 
until the announcement was made of the decrees con- 
fiscating the property of the house of Orleans. On the 
day of its announcement he resigned his seat upon that 
Consulting Committee, which, he said, from the day of 
its creation had never been consulted. 

From this time forward, says Foisset, Charles Monta- 
lembert had no other thought but the safeguard of his 
honor and the preservation of the unity of his life in not 
allowing to pass an occasion to display his independence 
and confess with emphasis his political faith. His ac- 
tive career ended with the liberty which expired with 
the Republic. His eloquence was smothered in the 

* From a financial standpoint he could but ill afford to decline this doubtful 
honor. Montalembert was never rich, and the 30,000 francs ($6,000) salary ac- 
companying the seat of senator was a temptation which only makes his refusal the 
more honorable. 



7 6 MONT A LEMBER T. 

tainted atmosphere of absolutism. Yet he continued to 
be a member of the House of Deputies down to the year 
1857. To some who expressed astonishment that he 
should have accepted the mandate of the electors of 
Doubs under the new Empire, after refusing to sit in the 
senate, he made the very pertinent reply : '' Oh ! it can 
readily happen that the members of the Corps L^gislatif 
are but coniparses j but with the senators 'tis very differ- 
ent — they are comperes.'" 

His last great oratorical success as a public man was 
on the 22d of June, 1852, in a speech in which he at- 
tacked the new constitution, declaring that all serious 
control upon the part of the legislature was thwarted by 
the preponderant power of the Council of State. If any 
argument is needed by an intelligent reader, after the 
perusal of this constitution, to convince him that it was 
made for the purpose of giving all control to the presi- 
dent and those of his appointment and to make easy the 
path to further aggressions, the fact that this constitu- 
tion was not materially changed by Napoleon when he 
became emperor should be sufficient. Montalembert's 
colleagues voted with great enthusiasm the printing of 
this discourse.* But " the arts of political conversion " 
made such rapid progress under the Empire that men of 
Montalembert's free utterance soon ceased to be very 
welcome. There was less temptation for him to speak, 
therefore, and little good to be done by his eloquence ; 
for, as he had said, the legislature was a mere mockery 
under the present constitution. 

* None of Montalembert's speeches made after 1852 appear in his works pub- 
lished in i860 and subsequent years. The system of repression, carried on. by 
the empire, of all free utterance made it impossible for him to publish them in 
France. 



MONTALEMBERT. 77 



VIII. 

On the 5th of February, 1852, Montalembert had been 
received into the French Academy. This honor which 
his great services had earned for him was witnessed by 
the largest and most sympathetic auditory since the 
reception of Royer-CoUard (November 13, 1827). He 
replaced the eminent M. Droz. And, according to the 
rule governing the admission of new members to the 
Academy, his discourse was to embrace a sketch of his 
predecessor. The epoch covered by the life of Droz 
(1773-1851), the character of his works — the chief being 
Histoire du regne de Louis XVI.^ etc. — and his progress 
from " morality to religion, from reason to faith, from 
philanthropy^ to charity, from discussion to authority," 
defined the field of Montalembert's discourse. It gave 
him an opportunity to pass in review the history of 
France from 1789 ; and, brooding over its pregnant re- 
cords with the spirit of a man enlightened by fitudy and 
experience, he produced a philosophical essay rich in 
crystals of thought and moving in the majesty and ele- 
gance of his incomparable diction. His mind was 
charged with the subject of revolution. He had not 
only studied it in history, he had seen and contemplated 
it in actual progression ; he had watched its constituent 
elements drawing together by the law of attraction 
which governs them, and, when massed in the concrete 
of revolution, he had seen them explode and scatter de- 
struction. 

We know not anywhere a more lucid, condensed, more 
truly philosophical and comprehensive dissertation upon 
the great Revolution and the fatal heritage of France 



78 



MONTALEMBER T. 



therefrom. This discourse and the speech on the Do- 
tation dit Ft^esidenl (February lo, 1851) constitute a 
treatise on the political character of France which the 
student of her history and the seeker after the secret 
springs of her instability cannot afford to pass by. 
Uttered by a man who had no political regime to de- 
fend, being outside of all party affiliations, whose guid- 
ing principles were tliose which have withstood the test of 
every change for nearly twenty centuries, there is that con- 
dition of mind as a consequence which is the indispensa- 
ble prerequisite to just and perfect historical judgments. 

Note. — There hangs in the archiepiscopal residence of Chi- 
cago a portrait of Count de Montalembert by Mr. G. P. A. Healey, 
the eminent artist. The following is a description thereof fur- 
nished me at my request by my esteemed friend, Miss Eliza Al- 
len Starr, the author of Patron Saints and Pilgrims and Shrijies — 
books full of learning, inspired by deep devotion, and adorned 
in their composition by the double arts of pen and brflsh. Here 
are her words : 

" This portrait of the great French writer portrays him as he 
must have been at forty 3'ears. But 'tis not the great writer 
alone, but the orator who is giving forth those wonderful sen- 
tences which so thrilled his listeners. The characteristic lofti- 
ness of sentiment, the unflinching fidelity to truth, the glow of 
knightl}'^ honor, the delicate irony with which he pierced the con- 
sciences of those who had succumbed to the influences of that 
sceptical period, all are expressed in the pose of the head, the 
fire of the luminous eyes, the lines of the mobile mouth, around 
which must have pla^^ed such varying emotions ; the whole effect 
intensified by the closely-buttoned coat, as if he had girded him- 
self for one of his grand conflicts with modern indifFerentism. 

"The picture was painted from life, and Count Auguste de 
Nauteuil, who saw it in Chicago and whose father had stood 
shoulder to shoulder with Montalembert in the Chamber of Peers, 
declared it to be a characteristic likeness. 

St. Joseph's Cottage, Chicago, III., 
299 Huron Street, Nov. 12, 1884." 



part ZCbirt), 



" Je reste ^choue siir le promontozre oil m'avait portd 
le fiot des genereuses croyances de mon jeune temps, et je 
my console die naufrage qui m'a preserve de suivre la 
maree descendante de V i7igratitude et de la peur." 

MONTALEMBERT, 

DiscourSy Avajit-propos , Tome I. 



PART III 



1857-1870, 



THE government which sprang into being after the 
cotip-a'etat was to restore France to material pros- 
perity and to that military prestige which had van- 
ished upon the field of Waterloo. She was to have a 
constitution without those liberties with which the read- 
ers of English and American history associate the idea 
of constitutional government. That had happened 
which has been so well described by Burke : 

** A system unfavorable to freedom may be so formed 
as considerably to exalt the grandeur of the state ; and 
men may find in the pride and splendor of prosperity 
some sort of consolation for the loss of their solid privi- 
leges." 

It was to be expected that such a government would 
find in Charles Montalembert an uncompromising oppo- 
nent. And to the end of his life4;he imperialism of Na- 
poleon III. was the object of his keenest criticism, both 
in public and in private. In July, 1853, he wrote to his 
friend De Lisle on the subject of Napoleon : 

*' . . . I was, as you remember, a decided partisan of 
Louis Napoleon when he was still an honest man, at 
war with party intrigues on the one hand and social- 
4 



MONT A LEMBER T. 



ist passions on the otlier ; while the UniverSy with its 
usual reckless violence, was his decided antagonist and 
doing its best to identify the Catholic cause with that of 
the Count de Chambord. I even went very far in my 
approbation of his coup-d'e'tat and its immediate conse- 
quences, but I turned away in disgust from the man and 
his measures as soon as I discovered that he was exclu- 
sively directed by mean personal, dynasticai motives, 
and led away by the most inexcusable baseness to com- 
mit the crime which triumphant socialism had not dared 
to commit in 1848, and despoil the house of Orleans, 
who had twice granted him his life, of their legitimate 
patrimony, ... I, for one, both as a Catholic and a 
Frenchman, shall never resign myself to look upon des- 
potism, silence, and base, material lucre as the beau ideal 
of governments. ..." 

This was always the mistake of the Univers — to make 
the Church dependent upon some dynasty. In 1831 
Lacordaire had said in the Avenir : " It is not true in 
any sense that evil is stronger than goodness, and that 
truth fights upon earth with arms whose inequality de- 
mands the succor of absolute power." In 1853, there- 
fore, he whom history had taught that the Church was 
above and beyond ^all change, independent of any 
human government for her existence, felt that she was 
compromised as far as she could be (in her representa- 
tive members) when so many of those who should have 
scorned such a union were endeavoring to link her des- 
tiny in France with the lot of an arbitrary and dishonest 
government. Montalembert's feelings were greatly hurt 
at the desertion of so many of those who had fought 
with him the cause of religious aud educational free- 



MONTALEMBER T. 83 

dom. July 19, 1857, he wrote to a friend from Vichy 
concerning the late elections : 

'' You will have probably seen in the papers that after 
twenty-six [continuous] years of public service I have 
been set aside in the recent elections, and for the first 
time since I became of age deprived of a vote in the 
councils of my country ; and this thanks to the clergy 
of Franche-Comte, half of whom voted against me and 
the otiier half stayed at home. Such has been the result 
of the influence of the Univers and of its calumnies and 
denunciations for the last seven years against me and 
my friends. ... If they had set up against me a man 
like Veuillot, or some such, whose opinions they approve 
of, I should have understood their preferring him ; but 
they have given me up, the oldest and, I think I may 
say, the stanchest soldier the Cliurch has known in 
France for many long years, in order to elect an un- 
known young man who has never done and never will 
do anything for religion or society, but who belongs to 
the imperial domesticity and rejoices in wearing a cham- 
berlain's key behind his back. . . ." 



II. 



It was his delight to escape from the oppressive air 
of autocracy " to take a bath of life in free England." 
Her institutions had always had a great attraction for 
him. When but a young man, as we have seen, the libe- 
ral form of her government elicited his praise and his 
envy. Throughout his public career he cited her, on 
many occasions, as an active proof of the practicability 



8 4 A/OiV TA LEMBER T. 

of religious and educational liberty. In 1855 the result 
of a visit to this land of his birth was his work V Avenir 
Politique de rA?igIeterre ("The Political Future of Eng- 
land"). An Englishwoman of no ordinary intelligence 
has said of this book : 

'' It is wonderfully true and intelligent in its descrip- 
tions of English life, society, and modes of thought — 
descriptions which probably no foreign observer has 
ever equalled. To compare tliese brilliant and lifelike 
sketches with the absurdities given forth by even so well 
qualified an observer as the last French explorer who 
has visited our barbarous coasts, the accomplished phi- 
losopher, M. Taine, will at once show the reader how 
infinite was the superiority in knowledge and apprehen- 
sion of our country and its ways possessed by the noble 
Frenchman, whose English blood had so strange and en- 
during an influence upon his life." * 

We have not the space to go into an analysis of this 
book. In fact, it has not been our plan to attempt that 
task with any of his works. 

The Political Futu7-e of England met everywhere with 
great success, and especially in England. In five years 
it passed tlirough six editions in France. In the pub- 
lisher's preface it is recorded " that the impression pro- 
duced by this book upon England itself does not ap- 
pear to lessen ; . . „ all the reviews and the principal 
journals take pains daily to develop, contest, or confirm 
the judgments and previsions of the author ; . . . and 
it has had in addition an honor which, we believe, has 
never been accorded to any foreign book or writer : it 
has been the occasion of a debate in the English Parlia- 

* Mrs. Oliphant's M^iinoir of Montalembert^ vol ii. p. 195 (Tauclmiu) . 



MONTALEMBERT. 85 

• ■ - . . 

mentj.and, while appealed to on all sides as an autho- 
rity for the most different opinions, has received unani- 
mous applause." 

Three years after the publication of this political 
work and the journey which was its occasion he re- 
turned to England — 1858. This trip, like the previous 
one, resulted in a publication from his pen in the col- 
umns of the Correspondant — " Un Dibat sur I'lnde au 
Parlement Anglais." " It is the history only," says Mrs. 
Oliphant, " of a parliamentary debate ; yet so perfectly 
is the underplay of motive and influence kept before us, 
and all the side-lights thrown in, that no chapter in his- 
tory could be more picturesque and no drama more in- 
teresting. This is how it appears from an Englisli point 
of view. From the French its effect was still more strik- 
ing and noticeable. In every new trait of the free- 
dom and force of English political life, in every detail 
given and principle laid down, there is a subtle but most 
powerful contrast, at once melancholy and bitter. . . ." 
Further on she says : " The contrast between the two 
nations was carried on with a closeness and keenness 
which proves how difficult, under the most favorable cir- 
cumstances, it must be to silence altogether a man of 
genius and debar him from the subtle and keen-edged 
weapons which he has always at command."* The 
entire sketch was republished in the Times of London, 
occupying one whole, vast page, closely printed, of five 
or six numbers of that paper, in which for almost as 
many days there was a leading article on the subject of 
the " Derby," which Montalembert had so admirably 
described in his sketch — since that event put an inter- 

* Mrs. Oliphant's Memoir of I\Iontale]iibert. vol. ii. pp. 203, 205. 



8 6 MONT A LEMBER T. 

ruption to, and caused an adjournment of, the debate 
recounted. The Times describes the article with justice 
as a piece of splendid oratory rather than writing, and 
its author was treated with great courtesy and warm 
appreciation. 

But the government whose boast was that it rested 
upon the base of universal suffrage showed its little 
confidence in the security of its base by seizing the 
French and English papers reproducing it, and follow- 
ing this up a month later — November, 1858 — by a prose- 
cution of Montalembert and the editor of the Corre- 
spondant. This prosecution was a mistake, as most such 
prosecutions prove to be when it is too late to with- 
draw; for it only enabled Montalembert to give a double 
force to what he had shown in his pamphlet — the de- 
plorable contrast between the liberty of speech allowed 
in the British Parliament and the smothering restraints 
placed upon free utterance in the French legislature. 
The celebrated Dufaure and the illustrious Berryer — the 
father of the French bar and the greatest lawyer in 
France — were his advocates. The audience who had 
collected to hear this trial was " the best and highest 
that Paris could collect together." The result of the 
trial in the lower court was a conviction — a fine of three 
thousand francs and six months' imprisonment for Mon- 
talembert, and a month's imprisonment and a fine of a 
thousand francs for the publisher of the Correspondant. 
Napoleon announced by the Moniteur that he remitted 
the sentence. But Montalembert had appealed tlie 
cause to the highest tribunal in the meantime, and, with 
characteristic independence, refused the remission. The 
higher court confirmed the sentence, and Napoleon 



MONTALEMBERT. 87 

again pardoned Montalembert. Pending the appeal 
Lacordaire wrote to bis friend advising him to quit 
France for England or Belgium. The words of tliis 
saintly Dominican, penned in tlie simple and austere 
retreat which La Vie tntif/ie et religieuse du Fere Lacor- 
daire has so touchingly portrayed, are a tribute to the 
character of Montalembert which the capable judgment 
of him who sent them and his incapability of flattery 
make a valuable piece of evidence. The letter is dated 
Soreze, November 26, 1858 : ". . . You have given up 
your life to the establishment in France of an honest 
and lawful freedom. You have obtained for us one 
liberty which has not yet perished — the liberty of teach- 
ing and of education. What, then, remains to you but 
to suffer for this cause, which already owes you so 
much, and to wliich also you OAve your greatness, civil 
and religious ? . . . God alone knows if we shall ever 
see better days, and if France is worthy of gaining back 
in our time the institutions which her own faults have 
lost to her. But whatever may happen in our time, the 
future will brighten over our graves. It will find us 
pure from all treason or defection, from the adulation 
of success^ and constant in our hope for a state of affairs, 
both in religion and politics, which shall be worthy of 
that Christianity whose children we are. We have dis- 
dained to seek for our faith the support of despotism, wher- 
ever it may reign. We have sought its triumph only by 
the 7neans employed by the apostles and martyrs -"^ and if 
it is to triumph in this world it will be solely by those 

* We have violated Schlegel's dictum— that in good prose every word is under- 
lined—and italicized the words printed so above, that the reader's attention 
might be more closely called thereto. 



8 8 MON TA LEMBER T. 

means which gave it the empire over paganism, and 
which have secured it up to the present time from the 
hateful conspiracies of false philosophy and false politics. 

" Here, my dear friend, is our consolation, and yours 
in particular. Nothing great was ever exempt from 
some sensible sign of the cross ; the suffering whicli 
saved the world is the immortal consecration of all true 
greatness. You are already affected in your healtli, and 
you are about to be so in your safety. In short, you 
have no longer a country ; for that is no country for a 
man where he is at the mercy of an administration the 
very laws of which sanction its arbitrary action. . . . 
You are the honorable victim of it. God, who has 
given you the love of justice, the sentiment of civil 
duty, and the still higlier comprehension of all liberties, 
human and divine — God, I say, will give you strength 
according to your need to endure so many mental evils 
as well as so many sufferings of the body. I beg of 
you, above all, not to be bitter against your fate : calm 
and gentleness are the ornament of suffering. These 
are what made Jesus Christ so wonderful upon the 
cross. . . . There can be no doubt that your article 
was a pi'otest against the moral degradation of otir coun- 
try. . . . But this protest exceeded only in a small de- 
gree the measure of complaint which an intelligent 
tyranny permits to the dissatisfied. The absolute si- 
lence of thirty-four millions of men is always a re- 
proach in itself, . . I could not have written as you 
have done, because I am not a political man ; but a 
layman, a former peer of France, might without dero- 
gation have given a still sharper edge to his pen. ..." 

If Napoleon or his ministers thought that Montalem- 



MONTALEMBER T. 89 



bert could be frightened into silence by prosecution 
or bribed to abandon his wonted freedom of utterance 
by a pardon, they were very much mistaken in their esti- 
mate of the man. In October, 1859, he published his 
article, "Pie IX. et la France en 1849 et en 1859,"* in 
which Napoleon's well-known betrayal of the cause of 
the pope to Victor Emmanuel is set forth very strongly. 
The Correspondant, in which it was originally published, 
and L'Amide la Religion, in which it was reproduced, 
were each warned by the government. The article, 
printed in brochure^ was seized by the government on 
the 31st of October, and became the object of a judicial 
pursuit, which terminated by a nolle prosequi, the gov- 
ernment deeming it advisable not to repeat its former 
mistake. 

The following extracts from Montalembert's letters 
about this time will define in no mistakable colors his 
opinion of Napoleon, and also throw light on Montalem- 
bert's political views. He is writing in January, i860 : 
*' . . . I am personally fond of the Orleans princes, but 
I have no sort of faith or confidence in any dynasty 
or any royalty, past, present, or future. I only love, 
revere, and desire in the government of this world three 
things independent of every person — justice, freedom, 
and honor. These three things are directly antipathe- 
tic to Napoleon III. ... He may be, as you style him, 
a wonderful politician, if, as is unfortunately the case, 
enormous lying is one of the principal qualities of great 
politicians." Later— October, 1867— he said of him : 
* . . . The base treachery with which he, and he alone, 

* This will be found in vol. ii. of Montalembert's (Euvres poUmiques et 
diverses. 

4* 



90 MONTALEMBERT. ' 

has destroyed the temporal power of the pope will suf- 
ficiently stamp his monil character on the judgment of 
history ; while by the creation of United Italy and United 
Germany he has shown the worthlessness of his policy and 
destroyed that relative greatness of France which he had 
received from the hands of the house of Bourbon and 
the Republic. But, what is worse tlian all that, he has 
debased the moral character of the nation, and, under the 
hollozv covering of the material improvements which you 
signalize, he has destroyed every principle and every 
habit of conservative resistance. This will become evi- 
dent in the next revolution, when, instead of the conser- 
vative reaction getting the upper hand, as was the case 
in 1830 and 1848, France will become a lasting prey to 
the atheistical and Jacobinical party which has been fo- 
mented in every village by the imperial administration. 
This you will perhaps see, my dear friend ; I trust I shall 
not, as having lived for sixteen years under the rule of 
Napoleon III. has utterly disgusted me with this world 
and everything in it." This was a prediction which 
events have only too faithfully verified. * 



III. 

Montalembert's country home was a chateau of the 
fifteenth century, called '* La Roche en Breny," and was 
purchased by him in 1842. It is situated among the 
Burgundian hills, and, because of the similarity of its 
surroundings to the bleak moorlands of Scotland, his 

* See in the thirty-fourth volume of the Catholic World an article, " Napoleon 
III. and his Reign,'' by Rev. Dr. Brann. It is an excellent compend, and will 
show very clearly why Montalembert and Napoleon could not be otherwise than 
antagonistic. 



MONTALEMBER T. ^ I 

friends were accustomed to call him the*' laird." But 
these features before many years yielded to the artistic 
taste of their master. Walks were laid out, skirted with 
trees and plants. Groves and orchards were nurtured. 
And here he lived to see tlie acorns which he planted 
" shade and pleasant umbrage " ; for "how much grows 
everywhere, if we but only wait ! " exclaims the sadly 
poetic Carlyle. Thither from the gayeties of the capi- 
tal and the labors and heart-sickenings of public life 
he retired to the calm atmosphere of a domestic circle 
where he was an idol. Here his heart found rest in the 
love of his children, and his spirit got renewed strength 
from the writings and the histories of those vigorous 
champions of human rights and divine truths wliose au- 
gust procession forms T/ie Monks of the West, From 
what, in the bitterness of a lofty and sensitive mind, 
he has noted as the distinctive notes of the age — " la 
faiblesse et la bassesse ! " — he turned to the contem- 
plation of these men, in whom baseness and weakness 
found no place. "I owe to them," he says, "from a 
purely human point of view, a great debt for having 
reconciled me with men, in opening to my vision a world 
where only at dis.tant intervals egotists and liars, the 
servile and the ungrateful, darken tlie path. There I 
have known, there have I tasted, that noble indepen- 
dence which belongs to humble souls magnanimous by 
their very humility." 



IV. 

Montalembert's health broke down in 1852. He was 
seized by the pangs of a cruel disease which never left 



9 2 MONT A LEMBER T. 

him until his death in 1870. His literary labors during 
. the remainder of his life were carried on in spite of his 
intense suffering. The state of his health made travel 
beneficial to him; and The Monks of the West^ on which 
he was more or less actively engaged from 1857, re- 
quired him to visit libraries not only in France but in 
Spain, England, Italy, and other lands. The researches, 
however, made for this work extended over many years. 
In 1842 — in his thirty-second year — when he went to 
Madeira, the books he took with him were the Bol- 
landist Acta Sanctoi-inn and the voluminous records of 
the Benedictines. His most laborious researclies were 
largely made before the Patrologie of the Abbe Migne 
had made accessible to every considerable library a 
complete set of the Doctors and Fathers of the Church. 
This fact reveals how irksome must have been in many 
instances his search for the book to be consulted before 
the labor of consultation (always great enough wlien the 
tome was at hand) had commenced. From these garner- 
ings in the rich fields of ancient lore he has enriched 
his work with many marginal notes containing passages 
of importance from the ancient authors cited, not out 
of ostentation of erudition, but to offer some specimens 
of the Latin of the middle a^es — "of that idiom tem- 
pered and transfigured by Christianity. . . . But," he 
continues, "I did not possess the courage to reduce 
this magnificent language of our ancestors to the feeble 
proportions of my own style ; I have most always found 
my own translation, however literal, so imperfect and un- 
faithful that I have wished to give it but as a signboard 
by which the reader might find the way to the beauty 
and tlie truth of the originals. . . ." And speaking, 



MON TA LEMBER T. 9 3 

further on, of bis care in composition, hesays : "The 
task of the historian so understood resembles that of the 
graver, who spends his labor, his time, his eyes, who 
consecrates sometimes ten and twenty years of his life 
with religious scruple, even to tlie least details of the 
brush of tlie great painter whom his admiration has 
selected. His pious labor is employed in spreading 
abroad faithful copies of the model, which he despairs 
to equal, and thus to make the treasure known only to 
a few the patrimony of the many." 

The Monks of the West"^ was the cherished design 
of the author's life from his thirty-second year down to 
the day its last line — leaving it incomplete — was penned 
in the dim light of an invalid's study. But great books, 
like great trees, grow ^ slowly and have their roots deep 
back in the past of the life of him who produces them — 
whether it be a St. Augustine laboring on his De Civiiate 
Dei, to which he liad the rare felicity, before the close 
of a4aborious career, of adding the last touch ; or a St. 
Thomas, after years of titanic labor, obliged to see the 
weakness of the body sinking under the task which an 
unflagging intellect demanded of it to the last. There 
is something unspeakably sad in this spectacle of a great 
artist of the intellect obliged at last to yield his energy 
of soul to the inherent weakness of its clayey tenement, 
and after years of devotion, in which, notwithstanding 
all obstacles, his materials have been garnered, and but 
a short extension of the lease of life would have been 
necessary to the completion of the fabric. France in the 



* The best edition of Les Moines d^ Occident is the octavo one in five vols. 
The duodecimo in seven vols, is not so full in notes. Both are published by 
Lecoffre, Paris. 



94 MONTALEMBERT. 



nineteenth century has had the misfortune, among her 
many misfortunes, to see two of her most gifted sons, 
whose genius directed them into the poorly explored 
fields of history, leaving their work, as the Greek artist 
left his shield and Virgil his yEjieid, witliout that round- 
ing touch which the architect alone could have imparted 
to it. Ozanam and Montalembert were each prevented 
by death from finisliing their works. 

The Monks of the West grew out of a plan which the 
author had formed of writing a life of St. Bernard. He, 
who had come, as he himself tells us, from a secular col- 
lege, with his mind almost a blank as to the grand his- 
tory of the Christian ages, had had his interest quick- 
ened into activity by the revelation of a glorious past 
which he found everywhere he travelled, in the ruins as 
well as the intact architectural remains of the heroic 
days of the Faith, By two paths, divergent for a time, 
his mind was attracted to these studies. One was the 
path of art, especially architectural, which in Montalem- 
bert, whose mind was alive to the beautiful under all 
forms, found an ardent and lifelong devotee. The 
other was the path of history (simply), and especially 
the history of those men who had left such an impress 
everywhere on the soil of .Europe and in the histories 
of all modern peoi)les, as he found it and proclaimed it, 
as existing down through the ages for ten centuries. 

"The first time," says the author of The Monks of 
the West, " I saw the habit of a monk— shall I acknow- 
ledge it ?— it was upon the boards of a theatre, in one 
of those ignoble parodies which take the place too often 
of the pomps and solemnities of religion for modern 
people. A few years afterwards, for the first time, I 



MONTALEMBER T. 95 

encountered a true monk ; it was at the foot of the 
Grande-Chartreuse, at the entrance of that savage gorge, 
alongside of that bounding torrent, which are never for- 
gotten by any one who visits this celebrated solitude. 
I did not then know either the services or the glories 
which this despised frock ought to recall to the mind 
of the least instructed Christian ; but I remember even 
now the surprise and the emotion which that image 
caused in my heart." 



V. 



Protestantism, from the days of Luther down to our 
own, has systematically misrepresented the history of 
the Church, with the main object of disestablishing her 
claim to divine origin and denying her heroic incul- 
cation of the truth which is her heritage. No weapon 
has been so ruinous in the hands of Protestantism as 
this system of wliolesale vilification. For it has worked 
both ways in its consequences, not only against the 
Church but against Protestantism's self, opening, in its 
but too poorly constructed ramparts, breaches upon all 
sides for the entrance of scepticism, rationalism, ma- 
terialism. Protestantism, in its dissension, having taken 
with it but a small segment of the perfect circle of re- 
vealed truth, has proven itself, at the rear and on both 
flanks, lamentably pregnable to the weapons of modern 
unbelief, which, first nourished in its citadel, has passed 
out with the easy secrets of its weakness, only to turn 
upon it and destroy it. This attitude of Protestantism 
has had the effect of enlisting the energies of the 



96 MONTALEMBERT. 

scholars of ihe Church in the fields of patristic and 
mediaeval history. Many of the more enlightened of 
Protestant scholars,* seeing the disastrous trend of this 
warfare, have devoted their talents to rescuing the his- 
tory of the early ages from the obscurity with which 
the detritus of time and the calumnies of false historians 
have covered it. 

As his contribution to the cause of the truth Monta- 
lembert designed writing a life of St. Bernard. The 
researches made with this design revealed to him the 
glory of the past which had preceded that saint, and 
of which he was but an outgrowth, f He found that 
he was especially an outgrowth of monaslicism — a fact 
not sufficiently appreciated and emphasized by his bio- 
graphers. He found, too, that great monks had filled 
Christendom with their voice before Bernard. That 
sense of justice, ever a striking feature of his character, 
would not permit him to pass in silence over the record 
of these men. The chivalrous sentiment which had 
attracted him into the lists of history as the champion 
of the maligned cause of Bernard induced him to be- 
come the champion of the cause of monasticism itself. 
Notwithstanding the immense labor which this design 
must have foreshadowed to a man with heavy political 
duties resting upon him, he did not shrink from the 

* Notably the Protestant Guizot. We need scarcely recall, as a feature of 
this great movement and its results, the patristic studies of which Cardinal 
Newman and other eminent Englishmen — before their conversion — were the 
authors, and which were the main instrument of their conversion. A like move- 
ment took place in Germany with like results, represented by such scholars as 
Von Miiller, Voigt, Leo, Hurter, and the two Menzels. " This work," says 
the author of The Monks 0/ the West^ " so indispensable to the honor and the 
vindication of Catholicism, was commenced by Protestants, by indifferentists, 
and in some instances by declared adversaries." 

t Les Moines eV Occident^ Introduction, p. vii. 



. MONTALEMBER T. 97 

enterprise, devoting to it all bis subseciva tempora. The 
change involved, too, the sacrifice of many pages ready 
for publication — some five hundred in number — which 
had to be entirely recast. From an artistic point of 
view he felt, too, that his original plan must suffer by 
the alteration which he proposed in it — for it was still 
to St. Bernard as the cuhninating-point of his design 
that his labors were directed. But this could not dis- 
courage even one of his fine artistic tastes. The rea- 
son, he gives is worthy of the man : " Tliere is for 
every Christian a beauty higher than art — the beauty 
of truth."* Had this work been published before, he 
says, " it might, as did the Histoire de Sainte Elisabeth 
twenty-five years ago, have opened a new pathway 
across the vast field of Catholic history. Now it can 
only hope to mark a place in the series of contem- 
porary studies. The subject, heretofore completely 
ignored and forgotten, has since been approached by 
many. Although nothing considerable has yet been 
attempted upon the subject of monasticism in its en- 
semble, tlie ground of this subject has been sufficiently 
dug over by monographs, as detailed as numerous, to 
have fatigued in a measure the public interest, and 
to make it difficult to fix the attention of the reader 
upon ground so well known and pathways so well 
cleared. On that account alone many results reached 
by me througli laborious researches will not be held 
as discoveries and will scarcely fix the attention of 
the curious." 

It is unnecessary to say that the judgment of those 

* " Mais il y a pour tout chretien une beaute superieure i I'art, la beaute 
de la verite." 



9 8 MONTALEMBER T. 

who were competent to judge has not assented to this 
conclusion of self-depreciation. The work may have 
fallen short — as all, especially the greatest, works do — 
of the lofty prototype formed in the author's mind. 
This book, which has made the author's own (in the 
1-inguage of an ancient) the province of history which 
it invades, might still have been more than it is if the 
urgent cares of politics had not relegated its composi- 
tion to a period when disease had made all sustained 
labor not only painful but almost impossible. Yet the 
work was pushed ahead with true heroism. " Shall I 
ever," he said, "be able to finish it.'* All I can say is 
that I have done my utmost. But this utmost is very 
little. I cannot stay out of bed more than an hour or 
two every day ; and when I have written a page, or even 
half a page, I feel quite exhausted." No reader, in fol- 
lowing the majestic, the graceful march of this history, 
giving evidence on every page of deep and far-reach- 
ing investigation, would suspect that it was completed 
under circumstances almost incompatible with compo- 
sition. 

In 1858 Cardinal Newman, in considering the want 
which The Monks of the West has been written to 
supply, and contemplating the poetry, the heroism, the 
sorrows, the earnest labors, the rude trials — all the varied 
features of monasticism — concluded that none other 
than a Christian Virgil could do justice to a subject 
so surcharged with the materials of epic and bucolic 
verse, redolent of so much sweetness, affection, devo- 
tion, beauty, innocence, kindliness, simplicity, and 
abounding in bravery, in hardihood, in honor, in suf- 
fering. 



MONTALEMBER T. 



99 



"... How could he have brought out the poetry 
of those simple laborers, who has told us of that old 
man's flowers and fruits, and of the satisfaction, as a 
king's, which he felt in those innocent riches ! He who 
had so huge a dislike of cities, and great houses, and 
high society, and sumptuous banqueting, and the can- 
vass for office, and the hard law, and the noisy law- 
yer, and the statesman's harangue ; he who thought the 
country proprietor as even too blessed, did he but know 
his blessedness, and who loved the valley, winding 
stream, and wood, and the hidden life which they offer 
and the deep lessons which they whisper — how could he 
have illustrated that wonderful union of prayer, pen- 
ance, toil, and literary work, the true othim cum digni- 
tate, a fruitful leisure and a meek-hearted dignity, which 
is exemplified in the Benedictine! . . ." 

Has Montalembert realized this wnsh — has he proved 
to be that Christian Virgil which the then priest of the 
Oratory (the now cardinal) longed for? He has surely 
gone far towards doing so. Though he could brave 
the din of popular assemblies, he loved not less the sweet 
repose of the woods and the fields; though duty held 
him much among the crowded dwelling-places of men, 
where sin and misery, pride and pomp, are mingled to 
offend the eye and hurt the heart, that retirement 
which is removed — yet not in disdain nor pride nor 
misanthropy— from all this was dear to him. The book 
itself is a witness of these assertions. Where will we 
find poetry, if not in Montalembert's chapters, " The 
Happiness of the Cloister," " Ruin," " The Monks and 
Nature"? And yet let not the reader think that The 
Monks of the JVest was Avritten in a spirit of insane 



lOO MONTALEMBERT. 

admiration, of indiscriminate praise ; that he will find 
there "the impure sacrifice of a lie." To assure him 
on this score he will meet at the very threshold, in 
the author's magnificent introduction, a chapter en- 
titled ** Relachement." Or let him read the work in 
its entirety, and he will find in their proper place ir- 
regularities mentioned and condemned as they occurred. 
" I will recount these abuses," he says. " But from 
what source? From the very monks themselves. For 
in the majority of instances it is from them alone that 
we have our information ; it is to their avowals, their 
complaints, their recitals, to the chronicles of their 
houses written by themselves with a freedom and a 
simplicity more admirable even than iheir laborious 
patience. They did not know the rule dictated by the 
prophet of their persecutors : Lie with hardihood^ lie 
ever. They spoke the whole truth and at their own 
cost ; they spoke it with sorrow, blushing when they 
did it, but with the well-founded certainty that the evil 
which they denounced to posterity, very far from being 
the natural result of their institution, was a direct con- 
tradiction of it." 

Yet the critical reader of Montalembert's great book 
will not find it characterized by that clear and steady 
light so pre-eminently distinctive of the genius of that 
cardinal whom we have just quoted. The acumen of 
the latter, his delicate touch, his mild force and free- 
dom from headlong enthusiasm, are absent from the 
pages of the devout and eloquent peer. Newman in his 
page suggests the mild glow of an autumn day, un- 
der whose effulgence everything wears an air of peace 
and satisfaction, when the leaves of the bough gently 



MON TA LEMBER T. I O I 

stir, the birds complacently sing and move leisurely 
from tree to tree, the smoke iip-curls majestically in 
twisted columns, and the air is fragrant from the last 
flowers of the year. Montalembert's page is the sky 
of April, where clouds gather, thunder rolls, lightning 
flashes, and the sun comes out anon to dazzle us with 
its splendor. Nor had Montalembert the genius of 
Ozanam, which bears a close resemblance to that of 
Newman, and which some will pronounce superior to 
both the peer's and the cardinal's when the trio are 
considered in the character of historians. But if Mon- 
talembert's occupation forbade not his being surpassed 
by any of his contemporaries as an historian, as he 
was unsurpassed by any as an orator, yet when we 
seek standards of comparison we must select of his 
contemporaries one who had the rare homage of a post- 
humous crown from the mixed conclave of a French 
Academy, and another who, by a life of uninterrupted 
study and quiet, as well as by an edifying sanctity and 
sweetness of character, has attained the cardinalate and 
the general praise of his countrymen, without regard 
to creed, as a good man and a great scholar. 

Montalembert's power lay chiefly in masterful state- 
ment, varied by indignation, or irony, or pity, or pathos. 
His pages are marked by majesty and grace, and lofty 
and varied utterance. He had the industry and tlie 
learning adequate to his subject. But he threw it into 
the mould of oratory, consciously or unconsciously, 
wittingly or unwittingly. The Monks of the West, va- 
ried as it is by the gifts of his pen, the patience of 
his research, is really nothing else than an historical 
philippic in many portions. He is soaring always. 



1 02 MONTALEMBER T. 



And we tire sometimes in being ever on the wing. But 
this is not said in detraction. Nor does it materially 
detract. For the truth and the beauty, and the power of 
these two, are all there. Hence is it that these volumes 
have become so popular, have found so wide an audi- 
ence. And they must long remain for the student to 
whom the period embraced by these volumes is un- 
known, because of tlieir rich freight of facts and refer- 
ences, a safe guide along that dangerous pathway where 
so many have gone astray or found pitfalls. 

And they are far from deserving a hostile criticism 
made by Sainte-Beuve, who, after lie had become one of 
the sycophants of the new empire, smarted under the flail 
of Montalembert's criticism. This critic affects to see 
in the pages of the Monks of the West nothing critical 
— nothing of that pith and marrow characteristic of 
the books which live iind wiiich are the production of 
thought, of experience, of a fair and indulgent temper ; 
hence that there is the lack of that individuality, or 
rather oi'iginalit}\ which stamps even an old subject 
which has filtered anew through a vigorous and acute 
mind. And in his fondness for that species of criticism 
Sainte-Beuve goes so far as to charge both Lacordaire 
and Montalembert of having drawn all their inspiration 
from their old comrade, Lamennais. '^ To resume," he 
says, " Montalembert is, after all, but a soldier ; he is 
such in everything and throughout ; as such he will 
leave in the history of the political and religious con- 
tests of his time a luminous trace : Lacordaire and he, 
only two lieutenants of Lamennais after all, who have 
brilliantly continued the campaign after their general 
had passed over to the enemy. But the great deserter, 



MONTALEMBER T. 



103 



even in his absence, rules and dominates {les domine) 
them and remains present to their thought, to the tliought 
of each : they are only first lieutenants after all." * 

The chosen fields of Montalembert's labors with pen 
and voice lay in that province where many master- 
minds preceding him, who were not deluded by false 
philosophy or the petty guides of self-interest, have es- 
tablished their fame and their claims upon the gratitude 
of mankind. Hence it is that when we come to com- 
pare Montalembert with men who, with abilities and prin- 
ciples akin to his, stood in the same general relations to 
society, a striking similarity of action will likely present 
itself. Hence, up to his change, he may resemble La- 
mennais, as he certainly does resemble Burke, and others 
who might be named. A bigoted and an angered critic 
might conclude that he was a mere copyist from this 
fact. But in every spiiere, among men of eminence 
therein, the same phenomenon presents itself. And it 
should not provoke astonishment. For the principles 
of Truth, as the principles of Error, are still the same, 
and produce results which, in the long run, differ only 
in degree. He who works in the cause of Truth works 
out of love for Truth. His labors will not be ranked 
with those brilliant aberrations of deluded geniuses 
who have dazzled while they deluded the world. He 
cannot hope, wlialever the coloring of fancy, or the 
polish of varied study, or the possession of a vigorous 
judgment may do (and they will do a very great deal, 
for they will give freshness and grace and the power 
of conviction to his narrative), that his labors shall be 
more than an extension of those old grooves which the 

* Sftinte-Beuve, Portraits ConteJiiporainSy Paris, 1882, tome ii. p. 442, 



I04 



MONTALEMBER T, 



champions of Truth in the past wore so deeply in their 
day, and in which alone humanity has travelled with 
safety as upon the only highway to the stable and the 
good. There is nothing essentially new in this world ; 
what appears to be newness, whether on the side of 
Truth or Error, is only a difference in form and in de- . 
gree. He who writes to-day upon the principles of gov- 
ernment is only recasting, under the forms of a passing 
fashion, that which others may have done in the fashion 
and with the advantages of their day, as well in the 
last century or in any that have preceded it. The same 
in the realms of religious thought or in that secular re- 
cord of the longings and doubts and fancies of differ- 
ent peoples — in literature. He is only unweaving the 
threads of another weaver, more or less skilled than 
himself, to make a fabric of a different figure of the 
same fundamental materials. And historical composi- 
tion is only original by virtue of its garb, its arrangement, 
its display of erudition, and the results of a tireless en- 
ergy in garnering which it receives from its author;; 
the facts, which are its fundamentals, are not the crea- 
tion of the historian. If this be true of the intellectual 
world, it is also true of the natural. Nature herself 
does the same thing ; her originality is but the origi- 
nality of. variating forms. The leaves of the forest, 
which hang so lightly from their delicate supports, have 
drawn their essence from the mould made of other 
leaves and plants which grew in another age for the 
delight of other eyes and the umbrage of other heads. 



MONTALEMBERT. IO5 

VI. 

Montalembert's last appearance as an orator — the last 
time he raised his voice to speak with that freedom 
which is essential to the utterance of a man of his 
character — was in 1863 on the free soil of Belgium, at 
the great religious meeting known as the Congress of 
Malines. The feebleness of his health obliged him to 
deliver his address seated. "For four hours," says a 
spectator, " the illustrious orator held captive an as- 
sembly of nearly four thousand persons by his penetrat- 
ing, elevated, and powerful address, and which drew from 
it enthusiastic acclamations and frantic applauses. We 
have beheld a veritable miracle of human eloquence." 
His audience was a lofty one; it contained cardinals, 
bishops, high dignitaries of Church and state — the fore- 
most class of Catholics from many lands. The subject 
was the relation of the Church to the modern world. 
And no phase of modern society appeared to the. orator's 
judgment so important, because so large, so powerful, 
so imminent, as the spread of democracy. " For my 
part I am no democrat ; but I am less an absolutist. 
I endeavor above all not to be blind. Full of deference 
and love for the past in all that is good and great in it, 
I do not despise the present and I study the future. 
Looking on in advance, I see nothing anywhere but 
democracy. I see this deluge rise — rise continually — 
reaching everything and overflowing everything. I fear 
it as a man, but as a Christian I do not fear it ; for 
v/here I see the deluge I see also the ark. Upon that 
great ocean of democracy, with its abysses, its whirl- 
pools, its breakers, its dead calms, and its hurricanes, 
5 



I06 MONTALEMBERT. 

the Church alone may venture forth without defiance 
and without fear. She alone will never be swallowed 
up there. She alone has a compass which never varies 
and a Pilot who makes no mistakes." 

This subject of universal democracy is said to have 
embittered to some extent Montalembert's days. Cer- 
tain it is that the student of his writings and his 
speeches meets everywhere with the outcroppings of 
this deep stratum of thought, and everywhere it ap- 
pears impressive and solemn. 

VII. 

Montalembert's pen was never more prolific, never 
more versatile, than in this last period of his life, fropi 
1857 to 1870. Everything he has written is marked by 
the same high art of finish, the same depth of thought ; 
because whatever he attempted to do he did conscien- 
tiously, massing everything he could collect upon the 
subject to be handled, arranging and digesting, and not 
until his material had passed through the machinery of 
long and careful thought putting his pen to paper. He 
has written on many subjects and produced master- 
pieces in each class. Art, biography, literature, his- 
tory, political controversy, political manifestoes have all 
engaged his pen. In the province of political contro- 
versy we have his Political Future of Efigland, already 
mentioned ; his Victory of the North in the United States y 
which has been called a hymn of triumph over that suc- 
cess ; many letters published from time to time, and 

* See this address published under the title V Eglise libre dans V^iai libre> 
This title embodies the ideal of Montalembert's politics. 



MONTALEMBERT. ' 1 07 

which are collected in his works; finally, his admirably 
trenchant letters to Cavour in i860 and i86t. We 
know of nothing outside of his speeches which surpasses 
in rapidity and strength his flaying arraignment of the 
hero of Italian centralization. In them we hear the 
echo of those noble political sentiments which will 
embalm his discours, and the unchanging devotion to 
which, in all the truckling measures of expediency 
going on around him, enabled him to adopt as the 
motto of his works, when he began their publication 
in uniform volumes, the phrase which is 'a proud one 
for a man who has been long engaged in the highest 
questions and in the highest positions of politics — 
Qiialis ab incepto. Here we discover all the old filial 
tenderness of soul which blazed in such splendor in 
the speech on the Roman expedition. Having visited 
Poland and Hungary in 1861, he gathered many ma- 
terials for a work upon the latter country, which were 
found arranged and in order after his death. Returning 
to France, he published on Poland his article, '* A Na- 
tion in Mourning " — one of the most pathetic pieces 
of writing which ever came from his pen. "It is a 
poem rather than an article," has said an apprecia- 
tive critic, " but its lofty poetic strain, its touching 
and highly colored pictures, its lyrical outbursts of 
translated song, mark its true character even more 
clearly than versification could have done. Poland 
had been the first object of Montalembert's interest. 
She had always kept a foremost place in his affections. 
The aspect of this mourning nation awoke in his mind 
nothing but the profoundest emotion. Her piety, her 
struggles for national existence, her long and heroic 



Io8 ■ MONTALEMBERT. 

perseverance and many misfortunes, roused him into a 
very passion of pity and sympathy." Finally, there 
remains to mention his beautiful Life of Lacordaire, 
which is a model composition of its kind. The grace 
of the style, the sweetness of the sentiment which it 
breathes, the close and intimate view which it gives us 
of the illustrious preacher, tlie treasures in the way 
of extracts from Lacordaire's letters to Montalembert, 
give this composition a charm which does not attach in 
the same degree to anything else which he has written. 



VIII. 

Towards the end of his life an event occurred in his 
household which, though it was sudden, should not have 
been unlooked for. His youngest daughter, a brilliant 
girl, who possessed " much of her father's talent and 
many of his characteristics, who had made a brilliant 
entry into * the world' some time before, announced her 
desire to become a nun." ''One day," says M. Cochin, 
" his charming and beloved child entered that library 
which all his friends know so well, and said to him : * I 
am fond of everything around me. I love pleasure, 
wit, society and its amusements ; I love my family, my 
studies, my companions, my youth, my life, my coun- 
try ; but I love God better than all, and I desire to 
give myself to him.' And when he said to her, ' My 
child, is there something which grieves you ?' she went 
to the book-shelves and sought out one of the volumes 
of The Monks of the West. ' It is you,' she answered, 
* who have taught me that withered hearts and weary 



MONTALEMBER T. 



109 



souls are not the things which we ought to offer to 
God.' " Could pen have pictured a sweeter picture, 
or the imagination have conceived a day of purer 
recompense for the author of volumes consecrated to 
humility and heroism ? " Some days after," continues 
the same sympathetic narrator, " I had the happiness 
of accompanying the family to the humble sanctuary 
where the marriage ceremony was to take place ; the 
priest was at the altar to celebrate the bridal, and the 
bride, adorned for her marriage, in her orange-flowers 
and bridal veil, knelt radiant and tender at the altar. 
But there was no bridegroom there. The bridegroom 
was that invisible Husband wlio for two thousand years 
has attached so many young souls to liim by bonds 
which cannot be broken, and drawn them by a charm 
which notliing can equal." The reader, if he has pe- 
rused The Monks of the West, has read, at the conclu- 
sion of one of the volumes treating of tlie Anglo-Saxon 
saints, what Mrs. Oliphant calls "one of the most af- 
fecting utterances of suppressed emotion which per- 
haps has ever been put upon record." It is a descrip- 
tion of this episode. 

This daughter was the favorite of Montalembert. 
She was the youngest of three — he never had a son. 
His favorite appellation in addressing her was, " Mon 
bonheur." It was a sacrifice to part with her — a sacri- 
fice whose keenness only a parent can appreciate. His 
health was poor, his days were numbered, and the 
sweet ministrations of this dear clnld would have made 
any one less human than Montalembert exclaim that 
she had left him to his great regret — a ma grande deso- 
lation ! But this natural sorrow soon gave way to a 



no MONTALEMBERT, 

deep and genuine joy that this tender scion had found 
a safe asylum for her innocence, where she would be 
happy and useful, free from the sorrows of the outer 
world. The time, too, for his leaving that world was, 
as we have intimated, approaching rapidly. Soon so- 
ciety had to be given up. Then came the arm-chair. 
From 1867 his suffering continued to be very acute 
down to the day of his death. Then the easy-chair 
had to be abandoned for the bed. Mrs. Oliphant, who 
knew him in these waning days, has devoted many pages 
of beauty and pathos to their memory. " Never," says 
she, ^Svas there a more striking evidence of that vigor 
and life of the soul which is independent of — nay, 
almost in antagonism with — the strength of the body. 
. . . Death had nothing to do with such a man. Look- 
ing at him, the spectator felt it to be of all things the 
least credible. He was an embodied contradiction to 
that condition of humanity, an assertion of immortality 
more triumphant than any argument. Physicians might 
say what they would, we believe that no one could have 
seen Montalembert in that prolonged and most pain- 
ful passage out of life without feeling a half-indignant, 
half-contemptuous inclination to deny the possibility of 
dying. With such a deathless, brave, bright, and un- 
conquerable individuality death had nothing to do." 

It was while he lay upon his bed of pain that the 
question of Papal Infallibility was taken up for dis- 
cussion. His attitude tov/ards this question has been 
the occasion for some of the same religious faith, but 
not of the same politics, to misrepresent Montalem- 
bert. Others have even gone so far as to say that he 
died in schism, because they would have rejoiced in 



MONTALEMBERT. m 

seeing so valiant a soldier of the Church which they 
despised guilty of defection in his last days. Mon- 
talembert felt very deeply upon the question, and made 
the mistake — because he was but a layman — of publish- 
ing a letter upon the subject in the Gazette of France^ 
February -28, 1870. Foisset says that Montalembert did 
not oppose the declaration of the dogma, except as inop- 
portune. It was not that the doctrine of the infallibility 
of the pope was repugnant to him, but he had very grave 
apprehensions as to the use which miglit be made of the 
pontifical prerogative against the political ideas which 
were dear to him. Fundamentally his fidelity to the 
Church was in nowise affected. As the council ap- 
proached be wrote to a friend — Lady Herbert : " I am 
in opposition as strongly as it is permissible ; but I 
am firmly resolved, whatever happens and whatever it 
may cost me, never to pass the inviolable limits. . . . 
The Church is none the less for me the Church — that 
is to say, the sole repository of truth and of virtue, 
which are at the same time the most necessary and 
the most difficult of access for modern society. She 
has more than ever (and she alone has) the key of two 
great mysteries of human life — of sorrow and of sin. 
Therefore I feel myself penetrated with a tenderness 
for her and a respect which have only augmented with 
age. At the age of sixty, which I shall soon attain, I 
feel that I love her and believe in her with an energy 
very different from that of my twentieth year. . . . Be- 
ing unable any more to serve her here, I will preserve 
at least, down to the day when her last succors shall 
come to sweeten the end of my too long sufferings — I 
will preserve for her a soul more than ever docile to 



112 MONTALEMBER T. 

her sublime teachings, more than ever desirous of her 
supernatural consolations, more than ever in love with 
her divine beauty." 

Three or four weeks before his death he said : " What 
is repugnant to me is not the infallibility of the pope in 
matters of faith ; it is his omnipotence over political 
questions, which certain exaggerated spirits will seek to 
erect into a dogma as a sequence of the doctrinal infal- 
libility of the Holy See." And when some one asked 
him what he would do if infallibility were proclaimed, 
he raised himself in his sick-chair and with an animated 
gesture exclaimed: "Are we not told that the pope 
is a father ? Very well, then ; fathers sometimes wish 
us to do that which is not conformable to our ideas. In 
such a case the son struggles to persuade his father ; he 
discusses with him. But if he see it is useless to argue 
he submits, I shall do the same.'' The person replied : 
" Oh ! you will submit exteriorly. But how will you re- 
concile this submission with your convictions ? " He 
replied with more emphasis than before : " I will make 
no attempt to reconcile them. I will submit my will, as 
we submit in other matters of faith. And God does not 
ask me to understand; he asks me to submit my intelli- 
gence and my will, and I shall submit them^ 

Near his Paris home, where he died, was the old 
church of St. Thomas of Aquin. Here he succeeded, 
by an expenditure of much exertion, in hearing his last 
Mass and receiving communion. He soon became so 
weak that only an occasional letter could be written. 
The night before his death he was writingaletter to Dr. 
Newman, and while it was but half-finished fell asleep 
over it. Shortly before that he had finished some notes 



MON TA LEMBER T. 



113 



of criticism and admiration to Baron Hiibner upon his 
Life of Sixtus the Fifth. On this evening of the day 
preceding his demise, March 12, 1870, he wrote these 
words to the author of that work : "You have under- 
stood and judged the great Catholic reaction of the 
second half of the sixteenth century with a wisdom and 
impartiality for which I thank you, in the first place, as 
a Christian, and on which I congratulate you as being 
myself a publicist and also a historian, though of an 
age more distant and forgotten than that which you 
Iiave made to live again. You have not concealed either 
the shadows or the stains which are inseparable from 
the human element which is always so visible and so 
powerful in the Church ; and even by this means you 
bring out all the more clearly tlie divine element which 
always prevails in the end, and consoles us by flooding 
everything with its gentle and convincing light." 

The next morning he awakened refreshed. But a 
sudden paroxysm of pain alarmed his attendants. The 
priest came in time to administer Extreme Unction. His 
death was without pain, as is frequently the case in long 
illnesses. He prayed until consciousness left him. He 
was buried, at his own desire, " in the hallowed ground 
of the Picpus convent, where lie the victims of the Re- 
volution, where only those who are descended from 
those victims or connected with them can lie." He 
had this privilege by right of his wife. " He chose his 
last rest there beside the unfoj'tunate — by those who 
had perished either for the sake of religion or for 
their honorable adherence to a fallen cause." 



114 MONTALEMBERT. 



Foisset was the man above all others who should 
have written the biography of Charles Montalembert ; 
for biography is a task which belongs especially to 
friendly hands. Whilst Montalembert's youthful ardor 
was kindling at the hearth of those artistic studies 
which ever after occupied so large a space in his intel- 
lectual horizon, he heard through Lacordaire of certain 
letters, "full of grave observations and prudent coun- 
sels," which he was in the habit of receiving from a 
bosom friend and former sclioolfellow at the law- 
school of Dijon. So he became acquainted with Foisset 
through the good offices of their common friend. The 
friendship started from a correspondence in 1837, which 
Montalembert began. Foisset was then a judge in the 
Cote-d'Or. He was forty and Montalembert was twen- 
ty-seven. A man of firm and excellent judgment, which 
had been matured and strengthened by study, he was 
held, by the duties of his profession, in a provincial 
town, a distant spectator of events upon the great stage 
of central activity, where, if circumstances had been 
favorable, his abilities would have made him a central 
figure. 

Their meeting has been described by one who heard 
it from the lips of Montalembert, who loved to repeat 
it. " The visit," says M. Douhaire, " which Montalem- 
bert had promised to his new friend did not take place 
until the following year [1838]. It was an evening in 
autumn, when M. Foisset, then near Beaune, perceived 
before his door the arrival, in a simple hired convey- 
ance, of the even then celebrated representative of the 
Catholic interests in the Chamber of Peers. The sur- 



MONTALEMBER T. I I 5 

prise was great on both sides. The brilliant collabora- 
teur of the Avenir, the hardy founder and eloquent de- 
fender of the Free School {I'Ecole litre), the orator so 
favorably heard at the Luxembourg, astonished the 
grave magistrate by his juvenile air. And, from his 
side, the provincial judge deceived the expectations of 
his Parisian visitor by the extent and variety of his 
learning, the superiority and correctness of his views 
upon passing events, and upon those of religion in par- 
ticular, nor least of all by the lively sympathy which he 
gave evidence of and with which he inspired at the 
same time. The young peer (he afterwards confessed 
it with a smile) had expected to meet, if not a provin- 
cial Robin crammed with practical jurisprudence and 
local erudition, at least a man cantoned in a certain 
order of ideas and closely tied to some political party, 
as is so often the case in the provinces. But he found 
himself face to face with un esprit if elite — a superior 
character — less occupied with the law than with the 
prophets, at home on all questions, speaking of philoso- 
pliy, literature, politics, and religion like a man who had 
his own ideas on each subject and knew how to de- 
fend them. . . , He was rather below Montalembert in 
height, and of somewhat irregular stature, his forehead 
resembling those of antique busts, his expression of 
countenance sweet, his smile refined and benevolent, 
which did not unsettle the previsions of the visitor, 
though he afterwards confessed to being somewhat dis- 
concerted by this first interview."* 

The correspondence which had opened their friend- 

* Introduction par M. P. Douhaire dans Le Comte de Montalembert, par M. 
Th. Foisset. Paris, 1877. 



I 1 6 MONTALEMBER T. 

ship, strengthened in its motives by the results of this 
first interview, continued throughout Montalembert's life 
with a great and unflagging activity. In these letters 
the friends disclosed each to each all their plans, and 
received in return the advice, the criticism, the objec- 
tions of the other, together with that encouragement 
which is one of friendship's choicest fruits. Foisset, as 
a man upon whose head he could rely, was called upon 
for his judgment relative to almost every speech, every 
composition, planned by Montalembert. Foisset in his 
turn, as years and experience whitened the hair and 
developed the judgment of the peer, called upon him 
for like services ; so that not a line, we are told, of the 
Vie du P. Lacordaire * was printed until it had passed 
under the eyes of Montalembert. 

This acquaintance was a lasting boon, especially to 
the younger man. For who has ever experienced the 
services of a judicious friend, under circumstances such 
as Montalembert so often found himself in — when the 
mind oppressed by a mass of details, and the judgment 
wavering over the correctness of its action, has had this 
kindly light, this genial aid, this superadded strength to 
clear, to guide, to lift the judgment to a proper eleva- 
tion of standpoint — who has ever had this invaluable 
succor but will appreciate it in the case of the young 
peer ? This want, too, is felt the more the higher a 
man ascends the scale of responsibility. And that a 
man with duties in a high sphere has availed himself of 
tliis aid is not derogatory of his judgment, but rather 
the reverse of derogatory. \ But Foisset followed Mon- 

* By Foisset. 

t" Certain it is that whosoever hath his mind fraught with many thoughts 



MONTALEMBER T. 



117 



talembert in a few years to the grave, and before he 
could perform the task which his unequalled advan- 
tages would have enabled him to perform as the inti- 
mate friend of thirty-three years and the possessor of 
a correspondence embracing that period, which, now 
that he, too, has gone, will never see the light. 

He did leave a biographical sketch of his friend, 
which, notwithstanding that it is incomplete, "is the 
most authoritative we have concerning the life, the cha- 
racter, and the spirit of the labors of the eminent man 
to whom its pages are devoted." It was published ori- 
ginally in the Corresponda^it in 1872; and the author 
of the present sketch has been governed throughout by 
it in forming his judgments of doubtful questions, made 
so by the meagreness or obscurity of the evidence. 

Of the Memoir of Montalembert by Mrs. Oliphant we 
must say a few words. It has much in it that is delicate 
and exquisite — what we should expect from one of Mrs. 
Oliphant's skill as a writer of English. But it reads 
more like a romance than a sober biography. This may 
make it acceptable to the palates of novel-lovers, but it 
palls upon palates accustomed to stronger food. Mrs. 
Oh'phant is a novelist, and she did not dismiss her art 
in writing of Montalembert. The temptation to high 
seasoning of sentiment has not been resisted. The im- 
pression, therefore, left by her book is more painful 

his wits and understanding do clarify and break up in the communicating and 
discoursing with another : he tosseth his thoughts more easily ; he marshalleth 
them more orderly ; he seeth how they look when they are turned into words ; 
finally, he waxeth wiser than himself, and that more by an hour's discourse than 
a day's meditation. . . . For friendship maketh indeed a fair day in the affections, 
from storm and tempests ; but it maketh daylight in the understanding, out of 
darkness and confusion of thoughts" (Lord Bacon, twenty-seventh Essay). 



I i 8 MONTALEMBER T. 



than pleasant. It is that exquisite sense of melancholy, 
of pleasurable pain, which successful novels produce. 
Such an effect is unhealthy, and it is unjust to draw it 
from so real, so earnest, so healthy a career as Monta- 
lembert's, of which intelligent conviction and not ro- 
mance was the guiding spirit. 



